


Going Anywhere

by BrosleCub12



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drug use/abuse, F/M, Genderswap, Mentions of bereavement, Minor Character Death, Violence, boy-Sarah, girl-John
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-02
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-09 01:27:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/449727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrosleCub12/pseuds/BrosleCub12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU; Watson-genderswap. Trying to earn a Medical degree during testing times at Kings’ College in London is hard enough – but then try adding one Sherlock Holmes to the mix.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I owe a bucketful of thanks to sciosophia for her beta-reading, her patience, and the many enjoyable hours we spent brain-storming this story together and just inspiring me with genderswap in general. Furthermore, I'd also like to thank Frayer for all the valuable medical advice and feedback she gave me. Thankyou so much to both of you - and thankyou to all of those who have stuck with the story and encouraged along the way. It means so much.
> 
> Please note: based on the time I started writing, this story is set in late 2011.

*

‘Are you alright?’

She looks up to see him there, back again, and she smiles; wonders if she even should be, when her worn phone is balanced on her knee and there’s a warning email on the screen of a fourth student, found unconscious and cold, bruises on their arms and syringe needles in their pockets. Another lost night, a tale they just can’t seem to tell. 

Once upon a time, the drugs were where Sherlock Holmes used to be; the sheer crashing adrenaline of each and every hit. Joan supposes that really, in a new kind of way – they still _are_ where he is.

Only now, she’s there as well. 

* 

The first time it happens, during Freshers’ Week, there’s a vague rumour, people exchanging gossip about it at the beginning of a lecture – _‘I mean, think about it; If you’re gonna take them, at least take them somewhere where you’re not gonna get caught...’ ‘... Mate’s vouching for him, apparently, said he just disappeared...’_ – but to be brutally honest, Joan hasn’t really been paying much attention, not when there’s something else – or rather someone else – to occupy it. 

It’s not really a date; it’s more to do with her finally summoning her courage two weeks in and asking Sam Sawyer - the bloke in her class with the light eyes and the friendly smile - out for coffee. They chat for ages in Starbucks – over cappuccinos that he’s kindly brought – right up until it’s time for his next class; he hugs her (he actually _hugs_ her) and takes off, leaving her behind, proud and smiling that she’s actually done it, that she’s spent an hour – closer to two, actually – chatting with a bloke who seemed to actually like _her,_ for a change, and not Harry. 

(She always did have trouble forgetting that silly crush she had on Carl, simply because Harry will never let her; revenge, she still suspects, for the time when she accidentally put their mother’s handbag right on top of his work-in-progress pirate-ship matchstick model). 

Looking out of the window of Starbucks, she watches Sam walk away, strawberry-blonde hair pulled underneath his hood before suddenly catching a glimpse of black among the colour of the other students; a stride, a flapping of a long dark coat. Then she spots the bloke actually wearing it, stepping into her line of vision as the distant figure of Sam disappears behind him. He stops abruptly in front of a smoker on the bench outside, hovering _(worryingly)_ over him, his face a pale angle as he pulls a cigarette box out of his pocket; asking for a lighter. 

Joan watches him light up, quickly, without hesitance; a kind of odd elegance, actually. She’s had a stab at cigarettes before and it took five goes on the first try. She gave them up a day later, the third time Harry came home half-cut. 

The tall bloke hands the lighter back deftly and moves on out of sight. Joan’s shoulders shake in a silent laugh. _That’s polite._

*

Joan knows – perhaps better than most, considering – the absolute _importance_ of taking care of your own body. She knows that the brain, the veins, the arteries, the very _heart_ of you – contained within fragile flesh and bone – are incredibly precious. She knows that the human-body requires, _deserves_ nothing less than self-respect; realises this, even if Harry doesn’t.

It still doesn’t change the fact that her worst vice ever is chocolate. 

Be fair, really, it’s been a long day and she’s still incredibly proud of herself for this afternoon, so it’s with Go West on her iPod and an extra fiver in her wallet that she goes into the campus shop during that last scrap of afternoon light to treat herself to her longest-standing temptation. She doesn’t see Mike Stamford at first; in fact, she bumps straight into him in the aisle of confectionary. It’s when she’s pulling her headphones down and he – kindly, cheery Mike as always – is waving aside her mantra of ‘Sorry, sorry,’ as he would that she suddenly spots who’s standing behind him. 

‘Joan, this is Sherlock,’ Mike jabs a finger over his shoulder at the tall smoker in the flowing black coat. Now that she’s this close, Joan can suss the curl of the dark locks, the light cheekbones and the neatly-narrow shape of his eyes and remembers to hold out her hand. The smoker named Sherlock glances down and then slowly tugs his own, gloved in leather, out of his pocket.

‘Holmes.’ His voice is low, with the lightest echo and Joan feels the warm pressure of the glove around what she is suddenly aware must be a rather chapped hand from the evening chill. 

‘Joan Watson,’ she responds as they shake. ‘Hi.’ 

She offers a smile and something darting suddenly raises Sherlock’s lips; crinkles lightly crease the corner of his eyes and just like that, a pale face in the October cold becomes instantly humanised. 

‘I’ll be right back,’ Mike throws in suddenly, almost out of nowhere, grimacing towards the fruit. ‘Diet.’ 

As he moves away, Joan turns back towards Sherlock, ready to make polite conversation – only for him to nod at the shelf; or more specifically, towards the spot where her eyes had been fixed on the purple colours of the Cadbury just prior to crashing into Mike. 

‘What are you thinking? Twirl, or the Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut?’ 

‘Erm…’ Joan plucks the latter bar down from the shelf, turns it over in her hands as she considers her taste-buds. It’s not the first time she’s had trouble choosing, but it _is_ the first time anybody’s been there to vocalise the choices. 

‘I’d stick with that one, if I were you,’ Sherlock adds, ‘It could easily be considered the healthier option. Especially for a Medical student.’ 

He gives another brief dash of a smile, but then drops his gaze abruptly, his eyes falling on the row of treat-size Malteser bags instead. ‘Wasn’t that difficult a leap.’ 

Joan shrugs decisively at that; it’s not _really,_ she supposes, not if you consider Mike into the equation, and she waves the Fruit and Nut around instead. 

‘This one. You’re right, it is healthier; it’s what my dad would recommend. See anything you like?’ She wonders briefly, glancing over the long lines of Wispa and Galaxy and Bounty, just _what_ he might go for – right before she realises that he’s now stilled completely and is staring back at her, pupils flitting, and _fast_ too, over her face, one finger lingering on a Malteser packet. 

The sight would make her chuckle - if she didn’t swear he looked _surprised._

‘... No, actually,’ he says finally, bringing his arm down.

‘Okay.’ Joan glances at the checkout and then back to him with what she realises is a truly feeble head-gesture. Sherlock nods, steps aside to let her pass and then follows her up to the counter. There’s three people on duty behind their respective tills, yet they somehow end up at the same one, Joan digging out her wallet and handing over her fiver while Sherlock requests cigarettes, pulling out what looks suspiciously like a twenty, telling them rather carelessly to keep the change. Together they wander towards the exit as he tears the cellophane off the box and she unwraps her beloved Fruit and Nut; holds it out towards him. Again, Sherlock pauses; stares.

‘... You can have a bit, if you want,’ Joan prompts finally, shaking the bar rather lamely as Mike catches up with them.

‘... Oh. ‘ Sherlock lowers his cigarettes; his eyes flit from Mike, to her, to the chocolate. ‘Thankyou.’

Joan snaps a square off, places it into the centre of his outstretched palm and then turns to offer a square to Mike, who shakes his head regretfully.

‘Can’t, Joan, sorry. You know what it’s like... one bit and I’m gone. Like a man and his liquor.’ Mike chuckles, but the sound suddenly falls flat into the air as his eyes fall briefly on Joan’s face and he clears his throat significantly, _guiltily_ as he looks at his watch.

‘Got to get off,’ he says instead. ‘You be alright?’ 

The question seems to be aimed at Sherlock, who simply flips open his cigarette box with a brief, ‘Of course,’ and Mike gives a grin that appears considerably resigned, before grasping Joan’s hand.

‘Excuse me, Joan,’ he tells her and it doesn’t quite feel as simple as an apology for just rushing off. Joan simply shrugs, feeling foolish as she struggles to form an adequate concession and a smile around another mouthful of chocolate and Mike simply gives a quick wink before he strides away. Joan blinks at his retreating back, pulling the wrapper right down as Sherlock puts a cigarette between his lips, glancing across the campus.

‘I haven’t got a lighter, I’m afraid,’ she tells him, apologetic; Sherlock regards her, strangely.

‘I know,’ he says shortly before turning in time to catch a passing student with a brief request. Looking miffed, the student digs into his pocket and hands his over. Sherlock lights up and returns it; offers a smooth smile that somehow doesn’t look like one at all.

‘Clever,’ Joan notes, watching the student scurry away. ‘How did you know that he had...?’

‘Obvious.’ Sherlock nods after him. ‘Look at what he’s wearing: those trainers, new model about two months old, but scuffed, lightly caked with just enough earth – he’s not a sportsman or a walker, you can tell by his size, but he’s used to standing outside a lot of the time. Smokers do, forced habit by the law. Judging by the size and shape of the black bag he was carrying, he’s a media student with a camera, probably filming. Did you see those bags underneath his eyes? Tired, stressed; media students tend to be regarding practical projects, so he needs an outlet. That, and the fact I could smell smoke on his jacket...’ He pauses, takes a long drag of his cigarette, ‘Well, it wasn’t too difficult. Just as it’s not too difficult to know that you _don’t_ smoke.’ 

He fixes her with his eyes, and for the first time, Joan is able to coin their colour of grey. It suits him, actually.

‘... That’s brilliant,’ she manages finally, honestly, because it is, and she watches the grey pupils shutter as Sherlock blinks, then – almost stalling for time, it seems – turns sharply and takes another drag. 

‘Can I ask,’ Joan wonders aloud, ‘did Mike actually tell you I was with the School of Medicine?’

Sherlock regards her; exhales the cigarette smoke the other way. 

‘No. Easy to think that, obviously, but I can see it for myself. Neither did he tell me that you had a gap-year.’ 

He seems to let the sentence hang and Joan can only put her head to the side. Sherlock seems almost torn between revelation and the silence of another puff of smoke. 

‘Your provisional driving-license – which you clearly only hold for ID – states that you were born in 1991,’ he says finally. ‘You’ll be twenty-one in March, and so the initial, natural assumption would be to assume that you’re a third-year, especially as you don’t have the manner of a fresher.’

Joan levels her gaze. ‘Shall I take that as a compliment, or...?’

Sherlock gives her a look that Joan won’t quite forget; a single, split-second of scrutiny, entirely given away by one raised eyebrow before continuing smoothly. 

‘You never come to the hospital to study with Mike’s group, and yet you’re acquainted. Mike is well-known for being a student-tutor to both first- and second-year students in the subject – so clearly you two hold that in common – and also for his general universal friendliness to the world at large – could potentially endanger him one day, but there you go, typical Mike – so, balance of probability is that you’re in your second year.’

Joan tips her head, half-prepares for the inevitable question, the _why._ Nothing comes. 

‘Clever,’ she feels her lips curve in an admiration she simply can’t hide, can’t even bring herself to; Sherlock’s head seems to turn in a silent whip. ‘That really _is_ brilliant.’ She grins up at him and this time, there’s no doubt about it – he definitely looks surprised and she just shrugs her shoulders. 

‘Well, it makes a nice change to birthday reminders on Facebook,’ she adds; wants to lighten things somehow, dispel those moments, those odd moods that keep falling over his face. It’s bonkers, yeah - but it’s _true._

‘... Right.’ Sherlock’s voice is prompt, too prompt as he takes a final drag; drops the cigarette to the ground and stubs it out neatly without looking at her, ‘Thankyou.’ 

‘You’re welcome.’ 

Even as she says it, Joan’s not sure what he’s thanking her for, exactly; clearly though, it’s important. 

*

The lamps become brighter above them as they stroll along campus together – Sherlock borrowing lighters from random people as they go, and pointing out his observations about them between puffs. Joan listens, watches the way Sherlock exhales the smoke neatly between his lips, the way it curls and wisps in the air. 

The third bloke he borrows a lighter from just silently shoves it into his hand irritably, and Sherlock counters it with a declaration that maybe his boyfriend wouldn’t have stood him up this afternoon if he were to improve his general countenance which has apparently been going on all day. He’s barely lit up before the bloke snatches his lighter back with a ‘Piss off,’ and stomps away. Sherlock frowns; turns to Joan. 

‘Just offering him some advice; isn’t that kinder?’

Joan raises an eyebrow, sympathetic. ‘Not really.’ She shoves her hands in her pockets, offers a smile. ‘Kind of cheeky advice, if you don’t actually know the grumpy sod.’ She watches as Sherlock seems to silently process this information and she just shrugs in return.

‘So,’ she asks, _‘why_ do you think he pissed his boyfriend off so much?’ 

Sherlock rises to the challenge; stubs out his cigarette and as he explains the connection between eyebrows and the bottom of his jeans, Joan, stamping her feet, finds herself casting sideways envied glances at the frankly bloody gorgeous coat that he’s wearing and obviously, he quickly catches her in the act. 

‘Belstaff,’ he adds shortly at the end of his rattling explanation. ‘Thirteen hundred and fifty pounds.’ He’s not boasting – this is clear in his precision– simply stating a fact to her silent question, and Joan finds herself gulping. He’s wearing about two, maybe three months’ worth of bills, a couple of generous weekly shops, a sneaky indulgent trip to HMV and then some. Blimey. 

‘Right,’ is all she can manage. ‘Interesting.’

‘You could always sell off your sister, I suppose,’ Sherlock tells her then, after a slight pause as he scrutinises the night-sky; Joan stops in the middle of the pavement and Sherlock stops with her.

‘There’s a photo in your wallet,’ he begins, ‘a small one, somewhat faded, of two children – clearly, one of them being you, given the jumper trend – sitting on a man’s lap; underneath, somebody has scribbled “Hatty and Joan”.’ I’m guessing Hatty is short for Harriet.’

Joan can only bite down, hard, on her bottom lip, but it’s still not enough to quell the surging chuckles that are shaking her shoulders because, _honestly..._ Sherlock looks instantly quizzical – and yet again, cautious.

‘What?’

Joan shakes her head, lets a laugh loose as she digs inside her pocket for her wallet. ‘Mum’s writing really _is_ that bad... he’s my _brother,’_ she explains to the expression on Sherlock’s face, anything to dispel it, quickly tugging the photo out, ‘see?’

She holds the old Polaroid up; Sherlock takes it and squints close at the label, which Joan faintly remembers her mother scribbling over briefly, carelessly as she and Harry scrambled down from their dad's lap. It’s the sudden way Sherlock's eyes widen in their sockets – a look that both does and yet doesn’t seem to suit him – as much as the whole misunderstanding itself that has Joan laughing softly. Sherlock clears his throat, hands the photo back.

‘Dreadful hand. Sorry.’ He says it with his gaze diverted; suddenly, abruptly moves away and Joan jogs to keep up with him. 

‘No, it’s fine,’ she tells him, or rather tells his shoulder, given this irritating height difference and walks around in front. 

‘Harry and I were often dressed alike as kids,’ she explains, ‘Probably why we can’t stand each other. And he _did_ go through a bit of a thing for hats, so...’ She shrugs at him, no harm done, and then giggles again; has to, really. ‘He used to look like a right little thug on street-corners whenever he wore caps.’ 

Sherlock’s lips curve in something tentative, and then finally, _finally,_ he smiles back, as she places the photo back in the safety of the wallet. She wonders if she should _mind_ him noticing; that she should care, _defensively,_ that he spotted something so personal, so intimate. 

‘And I would quite like to sell him on, sometimes,’ she confesses instead, and that increasingly-familiar flit of Sherlock’s eyes tells her he can somehow hear everything she’s not saying. ‘Still... probably wouldn’t be enough to afford your coat.’ She clears her throat, even when the silence that follows doesn’t feel like an _uncomfortable_ one. Sherlock is watching her again in the growing dark and Joan pushes some of her hair back under his gaze. 

‘You pay close attention,’ she tells him finally. Sherlock puts his head to the side. 

‘I simply observe.’

‘Course you do,’ Joan tells him, glancing down at her wallet again, at that photo that he spotted, now fifteen years old; looks at her and Harry’s smiling faces. They always _did_ have similar grins; similar giggles. ‘I think it's fantastic.’ 

It occurs to her that this is kind of funny too, actually. Just a... a different kind of funny, almost strange. Yet - strangely harmless.

Strangely _nice._

*

She arrives back at her flat at half-past eight that evening; Dana and Mary glance up from their studying in the lounge as she comes in, look up at the clock.

‘I was with a friend,’ Joan tells them, pulling her coat off and hanging it on the already overflowing coat-stand and like a suited nickname, it feels true on her tongue. She can’t help but feel embarrassed at the memory of her own fumbling goodbye – in an age where the new get-to-know-you line is “Do you have Facebook?” she found herself trying and failing to apply that to someone like Sherlock. 

Sherlock simply saved her the trouble by holding a hand out for her phone, informing her blithely that he would check her number and text her later. At that very moment, her phone buzzes, and Joan pulls it out.

_Cab-drivers are rude. I would like to prove this scientifically, but the study would require more time in cabs, and I like to save my cash for cigarettes. SH._

Joan smiles a little; types a reply.

_Sure you werent cheeky to them first?_

‘How was coffee?’ Dana asks; Joan glances up. 

‘Hm? Oh, fine. Yep, all fine.’ She throws a brief smile at them and their Law textbooks, glances down at her own Medical books, in a small rumpled pile on the edge of the coffee-table. Her phone buzzes again.

_It’s not ‘werent,’ it’s ‘weren’t.’ And no, I was not aware that pointing out shaving foam behind someone’s ear counted as rude. SH._

Joan raises her eyes at the ceiling, even as another message comes through and she checks it, wondering if this lecture is going to take up more than one text...

... It’s from Sam, telling her how much he enjoyed coffee and that he’ll see her tomorrow in the seminar. Huh. Well, that’s nice; that’s... _well._

‘Seems keen,’ Mary pipes up; Joan blinks across. ‘I mean, look at you, grinning away.’

‘Just make sure he’s not one of those drug-users,’ Dana chips in, as Joan opens her mouth to explain; thinks better of it, suddenly, ‘there was another student unconscious on Friday night, apparently. They’re getting the police involved.’ 

‘Another... Oh.’ Joan nods as her brain catches up and she wonders faintly why some people simply see fit to just _waste_ themselves. She personally just can’t see the point of it, and she finds herself suddenly thinking about Sherlock’s smoking. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Two hours and many revised notes later, complete with cramp in hand, Joan undresses for bed, glances at the smattering of scars across her shoulder, particularly the largest, the drunken shape of an arrow against her skin. Wonders – just _fleetingly_ – if Sam would mind. Of course he wouldn’t; he’s a nice guy. Well - not that she’s...

The phone buzzes a final time and Joan pulls on her oversized Florence and the Machine t-shirt before she plucks it up. 

_I might have also told him not to take out his bad mood on passengers just because his wife had left him. He deliberately overcharged me. SH._

Joan just gives a small grin – _typical_ – and adds “Sherlock Holmes” to her list of contacts. 

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really thrilled so far with all the kind reviews and kudos I've had for this fic! Thankyou, everyone; here's Chapter Two! 
> 
> Please note, just to be on the safe side: this chapter contains more detailed discussion of both drug use/abuse, as well as alcoholism. And a special shoutout goes to Freya for her invaluable help on this section regarding medical terminology, as well as scisophia for beta-ing.

The next morning, Joan puts on the faintest bit of lipstick and the smallest touch of eye-liner in-between lip-synching to random songs by Florence and the Machine and Beth Rowley. Arriving at her first lecture at eleven, bang on time, she’s greeted with a smile and another hug from Sam. They wander out together afterwards, talking about the heaviness of their textbooks and the bones of the hand (Joan admits that she uses, as a revision source, the _Doctor Who_ episode where Martha Jones – in Joan’s opinion, probably the best Who companion alongside Sarah-Jane Smith and Donna Noble – lists all of them in quick succession, and Sam laughs); and whether they might have coffee together again soon. 

They decide for Friday – in fact, it’s not just coffee, it turns into lunch – and then Sam receives a demanding call from his flatmate, telling him to get his arse home and unlock the bloody front door.

‘He would have to shut himself out again,’ Sam sighs; shrugs down at her, apologetic. ‘I’d better go and rescue him. I’ll text you later, Joan.’ 

It sounds so promising that she can’t help the smile that spreads over her face as she watches him walk away. 

The rest of the day is its usual blur of lunch and practical classes, and emerging from her last lecture at five, rubbing her eyes, Joan is about to put on her headphones when she suddenly spots Sherlock in the crowd. He’s decked out smartly in his dark coat, holding a folded newspaper under his arm and Joan waves to him as she wanders across. 

‘Afternoon,’ Sherlock nods as they meet midway, ‘Are you all done for the day?’

‘Just about,’ Joan tucks her arms around herself, still suffering coat-envy. ‘How have those taxi-drivers been treating you?’

‘Oh, stubborn as ever,’ Sherlock gives a twitching smile as they fall into step. ‘I can tell you for a fact that this morning’s was in deep denial regarding his lover’s wife – and his own wife as well, actually, come to think of it.’

Joan raises her eyebrows and nods at the newspaper under his arm. ‘What’s going on in London today?’

Sherlock plucks it out and flips it open. It’s the student paper and on the front is the considerably clichéd headline _Danger of Drugs,_ by Jenny Wilson: a long and detailed article informing students (as if they didn’t already know; well, a few of them, clearly) the dangers of drugs and over-drinking (as if _Joan_ didn’t know) along with the usual warnings of punishments and suspension and criminal records.

‘You’re a medic,’ Sherlock says, ‘what’s your view?’

‘... Erm...’ Joan takes the paper in hand, ‘Not sure. Haven’t really been... following...’ 

Her voice falters as she looks over the article, sinking down on the empty bench they’ve stopped next to. Two students, both male, both found unconscious with heroin injected into their veins, two weeks apart.

‘Heroin?’ she blinks up at Sherlock. ‘Bloody hell.’ No wonder people are talking because that... _that’s..._

‘Notice anything strange?’ Sherlock asks her.

‘Well... not much,’ Joan admits, scanning the article again, ‘Just seems to me that they went a bit far... _fairly_ far.’ She shakes her head; shrugs. ‘Student thing, I suppose. Only...’ 

She looks closer, processes the exact details; the first boy discovered at midnight on the pavement over at Denmark’s Hill during Freshers’ Week. The other – the one Dana mentioned last night – outside the Florence Nightingale School over at Waterloo Campus last Friday. 

‘... Little bit stupid, to take drugs outside Florence,’ she muses out loud. ‘That’s the Southbank, and if you don’t want to get caught...’ She bites her lip, lets her voice trail off. She doesn’t know a great deal about heroin, but all the same, the idea of two boys who could have died out there in the dark, wasting themselves on a night out in more ways than one... well, it’s enough to make Joan suddenly shudder from something else besides cold afternoon air. 

‘What are you doing right now?’ The question from Sherlock has Joan glancing up, caught off-guard at the sheer randomness of it. 

‘Erm... not sure. Why?’

Sherlock’s eyes flit over her, albeit rather thoughtfully, and then, as if he can somehow sense that Joan has little more than Heinz tomato soup in her cupboard space back home, asks, briskly, ‘Dinner?’

... Well. Joan _did_ have soup last night. 

‘... What were you thinking of?’ 

*

They wind up at a little Italian bistro just a few minutes away from Guy’s campus. Joan can’t quite remember the last time she went out for a bite to eat with anyone. Well – she has, obviously, she’s grabbed dinner with Dana and Mary on the odd occasion, tagged along to that Mexican place they like, except she doesn’t really _like_ Mexican. She’s gone out once or twice on her own back in Reading, whenever she needs a break – usually from Harry – but she’s just felt completely _sad,_ sitting there all alone at a table intended for two, battered old copy of _The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy_ in hand. 

Sherlock isn’t looking at his menu, but continues perusing the article almost obsessively, his eyes, speedy inside their sockets, never leaving it. Joan sits it out for a few minutes, playing with her phone, sipping the lemonade the waiter brings her, and glancing around at the other diners. She’s about to ask Sherlock if he’s even planning to eat at all before a plate of garlic pizza-bread with mozzarella suddenly appears in front of her.

‘I ordered it,’ Sherlock cuts across her protests to the waiter that there’s been a mistake, and nods up at the counter towards a beaming man with a pony-tail, giving them a little wave. ‘Owes me a free meal. I was torn between the choices, but it was obvious you would prefer this one.’

‘... Thanks,’ Joan blinks at him – he was right – and then after a slight pause, she reaches across to tap the paper. 

‘Do you know them?’ she asks, curious because Sherlock clearly is, very deeply so, ‘the two lads, I mean?’

‘I know of them,’ Sherlock replies, eyes on the article as Joan’s hand lingers on the headline, ‘the first student is a fresher. The second is a third year, and he’s the one who’s starting to cause panic.’ He claps his hands together, regards the paper thoughtfully over the fingertips. 

Joan frowns, but she’s listening. Sherlock’s tone demands it somehow; something like anticipation, like curiousity, like _excitement_ – and completely different to the way in which she’s heard others talk about it – swells inside his voice. 

‘So... what’s so interesting about it?’ she asks. 

‘The fact that both of them are protesting ever taking the drugs,’ Sherlock states simply, without moving and Joan can’t help her incredulous chuckle.

‘Protesting? Come on. They were both found with the needles next to them and the stuff inside their bodies,’ she shrugs over the article at him. ‘Looks pretty suspicious to me.’ 

Sherlock sits back in his seat, drums his fingers on the table.

‘Ask yourself this,’ he says finally, ‘if you were a drug-addict – or in this case, given both parties’ protestation of innocence, even trying drugs for the first time – would you _really_ take them somewhere where you could easily be found out, and in the case of the second, following an identical situation with another student that got them sent to hospital – and then suspended?’

Joan mulls on this around a slice of bread. Good question, that. 

‘No,’ she says finally and Sherlock straightens in his seat, clearly triumphant. ‘But then, that’s the addiction, isn’t it? I mean, doesn’t the basic need for the hit outlaw all common sense?’ 

After all, how many times has _Harry_ stumbled home, alone, either after another fight with his long-suffering boyfriend Carl, or else abandoned by his so-called mates, glazed eyes, slurring words, and forgetting the basic human principal of _calling a sodding taxi?_ She picks up the paper again, looks it over. 

‘They were lucky,’ she comments, ‘being found before something bad happened, otherwise... well. They just shouldn’t do this to themselves.’ She’s aware of Sherlock’s eyes on her face as she pushes the paper aside and busies herself with pulling off another piece of bread. ‘They _really_ shouldn’t.’

‘... Harry drinks.’ Sherlock’s words are to the point, brief, toneless. Non-judgemental. As though Joan hasn’t been a complete and utter failure at stopping her little brother from single-handedly keeping every bar and every off-license in the near vicinity of Reading in business. She closes her eyes, wets her lips; thinks.

‘Yes,’ she says finally; nods. ‘Yes. He does.’ 

‘... I wondered, yesterday,’ Sherlock says, almost haltingly, ‘the manner in which you were referring to him, and Mike’s occasional, if characteristic, lack of tact...’ 

He sounds surprised, and true, so is Joan. This is, after all, the last thing she thought she’d be sharing today, least of all with a bloke she only met yesterday afternoon. 

_But..._ she remembers telling Dana and Mary about it on the day they all moved in, during a kind of evening bonding-session, and she still wonders if that was a mistake: Mary was nice about it obviously – though perhaps a little _too_ nice? – whilst Dana raised an eyebrow like an armchair general, asked if he’d had therapy, spoken to someone, if he was living at home still. It was enough – more than enough – to make Joan wonder, since. 

‘You worry about him,’ Sherlock states then. ‘Obviously. You wouldn’t be checking your phone so much otherwise. Clearly, you feel responsible for him. Hardly your doing,’ he adds, apparently warming to his theme, ‘or in this case, his undoing.’ He lowers his gaze, meets Joan’s head-on. ‘Self-inflicted. I assure you.’ 

Joan can only take a sip of lemonade to compose herself; rubs her forehead. This... now this is strange. It’s exposure, in a way, she knows that, but... carefully. As though a plaster is being tugged away from a cut, but as slowly and as _softly,_ as possible. 

‘He’s, er... been doing it for about eighteen months, now, I think.’ She plucks at her bread and it feels weird, as though she’s performed some kind of dare. ‘Less so now, than before. Which is fine, really, I mean, it’s something – but...’ 

She shrugs at Sherlock over the light of the candle, and his eyes, his narrow, studious eyes, are now completely still on her face; he seems practically frozen. As though waiting for _something,_ but Joan’s not sure what – so instead, she nudges the rest of the garlic-bread into the middle of the table, to share. 

‘So,’ she coughs, fishing for a change of subject, and also because she can’t deny she’s interested, ‘what else do you know?’ 

She taps the article again and Sherlock takes her up on it, snapping out of the whatever-reverie he’s fallen into. His hand creeps out and he tears off a small slice of the bread. 

‘Well...’ he replies, as Joan does the same, ‘I do know for a fact that the third year in this case happens to be the President of the Debating society.’

Joan stops mid-chew. 

_I spoke to him at Fresher’s Fair._

_He gave me a leaflet._

_He was nice._

‘Just a rumour to many, but it’s true,’ Sherlock shrugs, back in his stride as he senses her reaction, ‘You seem surprised.’ 

‘Yeah...’ Joan admits, ‘I am. When I met him during Freshers, he seemed...’ she shrugs across the table at Sherlock, ‘dedicated. Healthy. I mean, he didn’t seem...’ 

She thinks back; remembers the face, the polite voice that gave her the leaflet when she was wandering out and about on her own during that excited surge of the first week. Tries, then, to apply a syringe of heroin to that same face; can’t quite manage it, somehow. 

‘If you’re the President of a prominent society,’ she says slowly and Sherlock seems to straighten up in his seat, in something like anticipation, ‘would you really want to be caught doing drugs? Something that’ll damage your reputation, the society’s, even? I mean – _I_ wouldn’t.’ 

‘Excellent question,’ Sherlock breathes, sitting back in his seat, giving her a tilted half-grin; strangely manic but at the same time apparently impressed, and Joan ducks her head. 

‘So – you think he might be innocent, then?’ she asks instead.

‘I’ve observed,’ he replies; of _course_ he has, ‘And I believe that things aren’t as simple as they appear.’ 

Joan nods. It makes a change, she admits to herself, to the potential poison of rumours. She fleetingly wonders where those two boys are now; what they might be thinking about what the rest of campus is thinking about _them._

‘They shouldn’t have been suspended,’ she tells Sherlock finally. ‘Neither of those poor sods. I mean, it sends out a message, but...’ She shakes her head, ‘I’d hate for Harry to suffer for the rest of his life because of his own stupidity.’ Even though Harry _is_ selfish, and even though he has made their Mum cry, time and time again, and even though... well. Joan loves him all the same, the drunken lush. 

Sherlock puts his head to the side, scrutinises her. 

‘A lot of people would disagree with you.’ It sounds like a statement, rather than a dispute, given what he’s just found out – deduced, even – and Joan simply shrugs again.

‘Yeah, well... they can think what they like, can’t they?’ 

Sherlock looks thoughtful at that, and then he smiles; it’s slow and lazy and cat-like, yet with something friendly within it. 

‘Of course.’

*  
They leave the restaurant a couple of hours later – there’s something oddly satisfying in not having to flag a waiter down – and stepping out onto the street, it occurs to Joan that she can’t really remember the last time she was a part of London night-life, stuck in as she has been by her workload until now. 

‘Listen, thanks for that,’ she tells Sherlock, ‘I enjoyed it. I really did.’

‘Not a problem. I liked the company.’ Sherlock, pulling on his gloves, isn’t quite looking at her, and Joan can’t help but wonder if maybe it’s been a while since he went out to dinner with anyone either. She breathes in the cool October air, and sighs as she remembers the pile of homework still on her back. 

‘Time to go?’ Sherlock asks, spotting the way she adjusts her rucksack strap.

‘Yep.’ Joan sighs, ‘But you can come over for a bit, if you like.’ The invite falls from her tongue before she’s had time to think about it; honestly, short of the half-skeleton she’s been loaned to revise from – Yorick – she’s never actually taken anyone back to the flat before. Sherlock glances around, hands lingering over his pockets. 

‘Yes. Alright.’ 

It’s about a twenty-minute walk to Joan’s and when they arrive, it’s to find the flat empty, for which she feels oddly relieved. Sherlock wanders around; looks into the kitchen, the bathroom, hovers in Joan’s bedroom doorway while she’s sorting out some books, his eyes moving over the skeleton to Joan’s personal effects, but he isn’t really all that intrusive – in fact, it’s kind of expected. Just as on the campus, his figure seems to stand out from the scene; both consciously and yet without effort. 

‘My dad’s side of the family are military,’ Joan explains, stepping up beside him as he inspects the small medal that belonged to her granddad, pinned up alongside her photos, ‘when we were younger, Harry and I were sometimes taken to army events; marches, couple of assault courses, things like that. Even went paintballing once. Guess it just helped me keep fit.’ She shoots a furtive glance down at her belly – used to – and Sherlock follows her out of the room silently, turning his attention instead to flicking through one of the textbooks while Joan busies herself with making tea in the kitchen. 

‘Dull. Obvious.’ A pause, and then, as she comes back through carrying her two faded _Thunderbirds_ mugs, ‘Would you like some help?’

Joan hands him the _Thunderbird One_ mug, raises an eyebrow. ‘That some kind of implication I can’t do my own work?’ 

Sherlock seems to think about that, pupils drifting over the cracks in their ceiling – high enough for it; it’s why the place is bloody freezing half the time.

‘More an implication that you would like to get some sleep before midnight,’ is what he says finally, almost but not quite smug. Joan gives him a look, but she will admit, later, that having Sherlock there speeds up the process. Chemistry is Sherlock’s thing, as it turns out, but he also has an impressive knowledge of the human body; something to do with a history of wrestling (!) and hell, Joan didn’t even know that _discombobulate_ was actually a proper word. 

‘Of course it is,’ Sherlock scoffs, _‘I_ use it. Are you or are you not training to be a doctor?’ It’s not exactly rude though; it’s just indignant, and oddly funny. By the time Dana and Mary get home – a friend’s birthday dinner, Joan remembers vaguely – her work for the night is lying in a finished pile on the coffee-table, she’s on her second – or is it third? – mug of tea and laughing at Sherlock’s anecdote of how he deduced back in April that one of his lecturers was a serial shoplifter. 

‘Easy, once I’d got a look at the watch,’ Sherlock is saying as Dana and Mary peer curiously around the lounge-door at them, at _him,_ as Joan throws them a quick smile. 

‘Who was it?’ she asks, turning back to Sherlock, ‘anyone I know?’ 

‘It didn’t happen here,’ Sherlock meets her eyes over his drink, ‘I’m not a Kings College student.’ He puts his lips to the mug’s rim. ‘Merely a visitor, just using the laboratories for the time-being; I was looking for a change of scene.’ 

Joan lowers her own mug, puts her head to the side. 

‘... Which labs? The teaching ones?’ They’re the only ones she can think of that aren't all that restrictive, after all and Sherlock nods.

‘That, and also pathology. It’s how I met Mike.’ He takes a sip of the sweet, black coffee she made for him and Joan gives a slow nod at that, realising that actually... she’s not as surprised as perhaps she should be. There is, to her, an easy freedom about Sherlock’s character that softens the shock of him as a whole, once you get over that first hurdle of saying hello. A darkly-dressed prodigy who matter-of-factly takes her out to dinner just because and asks her what she thinks and doesn’t give a toss about Harry’s drinking. 

Even more weird is that – somehow – it feels as though nothing has changed. 

‘Still, I'd better be off,’ Sherlock adds then, ‘considering you have a demonstration tomorrow.’ He nods up at the clock, even as Joan vaguely remembers the timetable she has pinned up alongside her grandfather’s medal. Sherlock stares down at his empty mug as though he’s only just remembered it, before handing it back to her. 

‘... Thankyou.’ 

‘Anytime.’ Joan huffs in resignation and leans her head back against the sofa, looking at him sideways as he stands. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then?’ 

The tiniest pause, and then another smile – _pleased,_ it seems, more than anything – spreads across Sherlock’s face. 

‘Of course. I’ll be around.’ 

*

He is, as well. 

Term trundles on; the rumours about the drugs slowly simmer down. Joan meets Sam for lunch that Friday; by the following Friday, they’re holding hands. Sherlock and Joan text each other a lot and after about a week, Sherlock stops looking at her in that peculiar way of his, as though he’s searching for something that she just can’t _see._

He also knows a lot of fantastic restaurants and is apparently insomniac, but then Joan isn’t a great sleeper herself these days, and has to throw a fair few late-nighters anyway, so it doesn’t really matter that much. She does notice very quickly that Sherlock’s interaction with her flatmates doesn’t go much beyond holding out a hand and offering a deadpan ‘Hello’ that’s oddly trained; the smiles he gives them are tightly-buckled, thrown across the room. Still, it’s not really as if she and Dana talk to each other much when Mary isn’t around, anyway, and Sherlock is, after all, a step up from Yorick. 

So it’s nice, it’s really nice, having him over until the small hours, provided they keep the noise down – not too hard, considering Joan is living in the room on the other side of the flat. 

And honestly, thinks Joan, if this is student life as it should be, well – it’s _really_ not that bad. 

*


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are again and honestly, there's no reason for this delay other than my own profound laziness. As ever, thanks goes to Sciosophia for beta-ing; Frayer for medical information and advice; and also to you wonderful readers and reviewers, even if you're reading this again for the second time. Honestly, you're all great. I can't thank you all enough for so much support (and will reply to all these lovely comments in full when I can! :P) Feedback and constructive criticism are, as ever, appreciated. :)
> 
> Regarding this chapter's content; the drug-abuse is expanded on, and things take a slightly dark twist - but only slightly.

Three Fridays later, Joan is standing back outside the Italian, now her favourite in London, a borrowed book underarm that she’s supposed to be giving back to Sherlock and which proved to be her saving grace for an absolutely hellish essay that she was finally able to get rid of this afternoon.

Sherlock, however, is late. Which is strange for him, because he’s never been late before, and yet she’s been wandering up and down like a complete lemon outside the door, jacket dangling from hand, for the past fifteen minutes. And she turned down dinner with Sam for this, she huffs to herself, rubbing her eyes and the bags underneath before she throws her jacket on and strolls tiredly and aimlessly down the street. She’s just sending a text to Sherlock, asking where he is, if he’s okay, when something catches her eye at the street corner.

It’s a gleaming, black car, fancy-looking to be sure and for one stupid second, Joan wonders if the Queen is driving through. But then the door opens – is _shoved,_ actually – and Sherlock himself steps out onto the pavement, his own phone in hand. Another man emerges from the other side of the car, taller, smarter, and slightly chubbier, wearing a suit. The commotion of the ensuing conversation is a vast one, even from across the street; Sherlock is frowning, no, _glaring,_ at the other man, who is wearing a considerably impatient, even _pained,_ outline. As Joan watches, two other strangers, both of them wearing identical black suits, step out of nowhere behind him, like backup; immediately, she jogs down the street towards them. 

‘Sherlock,’ she calls when she’s close enough, and the gaggle of men look up at the sound of her voice. Sherlock only seems mildly surprised, eyes blank on her as she dashes down, but his apparent adversary regards her closely with a frown as she skids to a halt next to them. 

‘You okay?’ she asks Sherlock, panting slightly, _just_ slightly. ‘I was worried when you didn’t show up for dinner.’ 

The stranger with him puts his head to the side and Joan instantly feels as though she’s been shoved under a spotlight, trussed up in a chair.

‘Ah, Miss Watson,’ the man’s curious stare suddenly slips, almost faultlessly, into a smile. ‘What a pleasure it is to finally meet you.’ He nods to the two silent figures standing behind him and just as Joan is wondering if she’s about to pay dearly for interfering, both silently melt away from the scene, apparently obedient. ‘Or should that be _Doctor_ Watson?’

He holds out a hand and Joan very hesitantly takes it, glancing at Sherlock; he, apparently determined to lose himself inside his phone screen, offers up a cursory look. 

‘My brother. Mycroft. Reason I was delayed.’ He seems to smoulder in his brother’s direction, as though his very existence is some kind of personal insult. Which actually, given the atmosphere that’s coiled around them, it probably _is._

‘So you weren’t actually in any trouble,’ Joan manages finally, suddenly feeling something of a complete idiot; Mycroft’s lips hook upwards in an apparent smirk as Sherlock pockets his phone.

‘I don’t know about that.’ 

‘That remains to be seen,’ Mycroft counters. ‘I’ve come directly from a meeting with the Head of Chemistry and two of the department tutors at the University of Oxford,’ he addresses Joan, ‘in an effort to try to persuade my brother to return to his studies. Full time.’ He fixes his brother with a look, a _warning,_ at the last word.

 _Bloody hell,_ is all Joan can think as Sherlock simply shoves his hands in his pockets.

‘You’re... you were at Oxford?’ she manages, and Sherlock glances at her, apparently somewhere between resigned and downright annoyed – although who to exactly, she’s really not sure. 

‘He ought to be.’ Mycroft words are quiet and to the point, ‘It was my proposal that my associates and I pack up his possessions and return him there in time for the coming week.’ 

Sherlock’s face is smooth in a silent layer of anger, but Mycroft appears completely unfazed. Clearly, he’s a brave man – or else merely an experienced one. It’s the weirdest argument that Joan’s ever witnessed, a far cry from the way her Mum and Dad used to shout at each other about anything from pudding-choices to finance to how many hours they spent fussing over their own parents.

‘You know the situation, Mycroft,’ Sherlock retaliates, ‘I remain in London during the week, and I return and do all necessary assignments over the weekend; it’s a fair compromise.’ He bites the words out, defensive, hassled – more hassled, in fact, than Joan’s ever seen him. 

‘Not fair enough,’ is Mycroft’s blunt return, and Sherlock’s mouth twists even further. ‘You need to actually make an effort to attend your classes, Sherlock – ‘

‘Oh, _dull – ‘_

‘ – and Mummy is concerned about your progress,’ Mycroft continues as Joan’s gaze determinedly hits the ground, ‘Especially given what happened last year.’ 

It’s firm, and clipped, with meaning beneath the surface that has Joan’s brow furrowing in instant suspicion. She doesn’t really know what the hell is going on, but here’s what she _does_ know: if Mycroft thinks his brother is about to go anywhere, then he’s sorely mistaken. But then, maybe he already knows that as well and because she’s really not sure what else to do, she just – very slowly – puts a hand to Sherlock’s shoulder and jumps when he does, the coat bouncing beneath her palm. Joan is perfectly aware he’s easily a head taller than her, thank you very much, but she still feels oddly... small. 

‘You okay?’ she asks softly. Sherlock seems... younger, suddenly, and yet at the same time, aged with it, as though he’s seen more than she’ll actually give him credit for. Exposed: the deep creases of his frown lines are cracks in his normally curious and confident facade. 

She weighs up the pros and cons of what she’s about to say and decides to just come straight out with it.

‘Maybe...’ she hazards; Mycroft and Sherlock both look around at her and she bites her lip, hoping that what she’s about to say isn’t going to sound completely patronising. ‘Sherlock should just... sleep on it. Perhaps.’ 

Sherlock casts another, final, look at his brother and then pulls his cigarette packet out; _this discussion is over._ Joan dares a guilty look Mycroft’s way but he’s giving her a truly odd expression in return and she really wishes that they would both stop doing that; it’s seriously off-putting. But then Mycroft nods, not in resignation – more in _concession._

‘A sound suggestion, Miss Watson,’ he declares, as his associates magically reappear out of nowhere, one of them silently offering Sherlock his silver lighter. Joan smiles awkwardly, weakly, back as Sherlock inhales greedily in the background, in obvious, desperate need of it, before blowing a thick fog of smoke back out, something about his movements not quite _still._

‘Lesser of two evils, really,’ Mycroft comments lightly to Joan as he delicately bats the air, ‘although Mummy does wish he would stop what she calls yet another “filthy habit.” Ah, well,’ he gives Joan an attentive sort of look – again, not unlike that of his brother, ‘perhaps you can persuade him to think differently, Miss Watson. You already appear to have shown him that one is, in fact, the loneliest number.’ 

He says it with the smallest, driest smirk in Sherlock’s direction and Joan suddenly feels very uncomfortable, more so, in fact, than she does already. Sherlock snatches his cigarette back out from between his lips. 

‘Go!’ he snaps, waves it around between trembling fingers. ‘Just go!’ His eyes are narrower than ever and without their usual studious, steady focus. He’s so aggravated, defensive in the face of his brother’s sheer smugness; surely, Joan thinks, there must be _something_ else – 

‘I will leave him in your clearly capable hands, Doctor,’ Mycroft says, oddly cordially; something that doesn’t really sound like a taunt. They both watch him climb into the back of the car, his associates in the front, and then Sherlock whirls on the spot, starts storming away down the street, leaving Joan to hurry after him as the car drives away. 

‘Hang about,’ she tries and throwing caution to the wind, grabs his arm, halting him in his tracks; she’s not quite sure what to say as he stares down at her.

‘My brother likes you, clearly,’ is all Sherlock offers, ‘He doesn’t tend to leave me alone with people he doesn’t trust.’

Joan huffs. ‘Glad to hear it. Look, come on.’ With a jerk of her head, she walks on, lets him follow and neither of them say anything else until they’re standing outside Joan’s front door. Sherlock seems to hover in something like an uncertainty which Joan just _knows_ she’s seen before and without a word, she pulls out her key; lets him in. 

Her flat is dark and _blissfully_ quiet, evidence of the day spread across the kitchen and lounge tables, revision notes of exhausted labour; Dana and Mary have gone out and Sherlock, hands in pockets, steps across to glance out of the window. 

‘Sorry about the mess,’ Joan mumbles, at a loss of anything else to say, before it occurs to her that he probably won’t even care; in that sense he’s a surprisingly easy house-guest. She piles up a couple of her own textbooks that Dana’s been using as part of the dissection on one of her Law cases. Not that Joan minds that much, but these books _are_ second-hand, and she _really_ could do without any more markings inside them, thanks. 

‘I’ll put these away,’ she says, holding the books up, ‘then I’ll make us some... tea, or something?’ 

Sherlock nods; remains by the window as Joan bustles around the kitchen, untidy with unwashed plates and the stale smell of vegetables that have been in the steamer for the past two days. She still has a few Jaffa Cakes in the fridge – Dana is a vegan and Mary, for some reason, prefers Party Rings – and digs them out, wonders fleetingly about putting them on a plate; meeting Mycroft has greatly altered her perception of Sherlock’s background.

‘Just bring them in the tin,’ Sherlock calls to her; he’s putting his scarf and coat on the large coat-hook. The black stands out sharply among the denim and pink and spotted blue. _Like him, really,_ Joan thinks absent-mindedly, handing Sherlock his mug; he takes a long, low sip without comment before putting it aside and reaching out for a Jaffa Cake. 

‘You’re wondering about Oxford,’ he says as Joan obliges; something in his voice seems lowered, guarded. And yes, she is – but probably not in the way he thinks. There are what seem to be a million questions on her mind: _how come you don’t want to go back; don’t you worry about your degree; don’t your friends miss you?_ What she’d ask anyone else – but... 

‘What year are you in?’ is what she decides to ask in the end. Sherlock humours her, as though sensing that she’s trying her best as he takes a small bite of his biscuit.

‘My second. Mother sent me when I was seventeen.’ 

Now this is _definitely_ news to Joan. 

‘... Golly.’ She stares at him with a mouthful of orange and dark chocolate; remembers how she felt when she turned up at Kings’ last year, but Sherlock... Sherlock, who seems somehow ageless to her, was practically a _boy_ still, stepping out into the real world when many other teenagers – herself included – were still gearing themselves up to get through the long hours of sixth-form or college. 

Clearly, Joan ponders as she swallows, he’s one of _those_ blokes, or he’s supposed to be; he doesn’t quite fit the cut, just like he doesn’t quite fit into anything. For her and Harry, with their comfortable middle-class upbringing of enough good food on the table and plenty of hugs from their parents, the idea she’s always had in her mind of backgrounds like Sherlock’s where everything is made of brains and money, potentially one more than the other, has single-handedly been obliterated by the man himself, by his very rebellion against, well. Against _everything._

‘Are you happy there, Sherlock?’ is what she asks in the end, because Oxford may be one of the hottest tickets in the country, but surely there remains a crucial difference between success and happiness anyway? (Oh, good grief. She’s spent far too many lonely summer evenings watching _The History Boys,_ hasn’t she?). 

She holds out the Jaffa Cake tin again and Sherlock wordlessly accepts. 

‘Wonderful laboratories,’ he responds at length, turning it over in his hands, ‘and a... a satisfying library. Although, there’s little point in remaining there when there are far more fascinating events happening here.’ 

From the tone of his voice, Joan knows exactly what he’s talking about and she narrows her eyes. 

‘Two students have been suspended,’ she tells him, voice holding a brittle edge, ‘they might have died. _How_ exactly is that fascinating?’

Sherlock tips his head, as though ready for that rebuke. ‘Your powers of observation are fairly substantial, but I’m hoping you’ll realise there’s more to it than that, _Doctor.’_ There’s something about the way he says it, something she can’t quite grasp; whether it’s mocking, or predicting, or both. 

‘I’m not a doctor yet,’ she informs him curtly and uncrosses her legs to stand, in momentary need of space from this... this clinical approach of his that he sometimes... _often_... has. It’s not that she’s about to chuck Sherlock out or anything, she’d never do that, but honestly – 

‘You will be, though,’ Sherlock states blithely, as though it’s a fact, and she looks around at him, arms crossed, as he offers her his usual crooked smile; strangely charming, very Sherlock. She suddenly has a job biting down on her lip to stop herself grinning, despite it all. 

‘Yeah well... you and your brother’s flattery,’ she murmurs, hand to her neck. ‘Seriously, though... what is this about, Sherlock?’

He answers with contemplation, tapping his fingertips together for a split-second before he suddenly, carefully, rolls up his left sleeve, holding his arm out. Bending her head forward, Joan sees them; tiny pinpricks of angry pink, small scars spread across the crease of veins – small enough for a needle. 

‘My first so-called “filthy habit,”’ Sherlock tells her shortly and the pieces fall into place in Joan’s mind.

‘You...?’ She’s not quite sure how to finish that sentence – even though she’s hardly going to judge, is she, not with her own family the way, the sheer _mess_ it is – but _still..._

‘Were you stressed?’ she manages in the end, ‘I mean, Oxford... pretty demanding place, I imagine.’

Sherlock tilts his head to the side at the question.

‘I was bored,’ he says finally. ‘It upset Mother, a lot. Cocaine,’ he reveals calmly, too calmly, too used to his own memories for his own good, for Joan, as he rolls his sleeves back down. ‘Powder _and_ pure.’ 

‘And... Mycroft found out?’ _Stupid question, Watson,_ she chides herself. _Of course he did._

‘Yes. Once I’d ended up in hospital.’

Joan’s fingers are between her teeth before he can stop herself, _Oh Sherlock._ Thinks of him, lying on a hospital bed, wired up to an IV and staring at the ceiling. _Why didn’t anyone stop you,_ she wants to ask, before it hits her, with a terrific smack of realisation, that maybe no-one noticed. Or _cared._

Ah. Well. That. _That_ would explain a lot, she realises and she swallows, gestures to his arm instead, remembers the way he spoke of Harry’s drinking in careful, almost blank tones. 

Because he could _understand,_ she realises now. He really could. 

‘But you are... you know... clean?’ Too late, she winces; she didn’t mean that to sound so judgemental. ‘I mean... you’re okay? Are you?’ 

_You’re rather lucky to be here._ With that thought comes the realisation, just vague, that maybe she should... perhaps _hug_ him, or something – but she and Sherlock rarely ever share any kind of physical contact and so she wraps her arms around herself instead. 

‘It’s been six months since my last hit,’ Sherlock replies. ‘I spent the summer rehabilitating.’ 

Joan chances a smile. ‘I could never manage that word.’ Sherlock looks up at that, and then a chuckle slips through his lips, familiarity that’s reassuring to hear, even as something else falls into place for Joan as well. 

‘So, those boys... that’s why you’re here?’ Another thought suddenly crosses her mind, only fleeting, but terrible, and it stops her in her tracks suddenly, as their eyes meet. 

‘In answer to your question, then yes, that is exactly why I’m here, although not in the way you’re suddenly thinking.’ Sherlock’s tone holds an open, almost resigned air. ‘I’m an expert, yes, but for cocaine, Joan – not for heroin. Good shot in the dark, though,’ he adds bluntly, almost as though he wants to be impressed and Joan bites her lip, bites it hard.

‘Sorry,’ she leans forward, ‘I am so sorry. I should never have – ‘

‘Of course you should,’ Sherlock cuts across, straightening the end of his sleeve, ‘You’ll be a doctor. It’ll be your job.’ 

Joan looks him over in the silence that follows; glances down at his arm, the marks of what he did to himself once upon a time hidden again before she simply holds out the tin with the last Jaffa Cake.

‘Takes a lot of guts to get clean,’ she tells him quietly, even as she wonders why Harry can’t quite seem to manage it, _still._ Sherlock accepts the biscuit; contemplates it for a moment before swiftly snapping it between his lean fingers and offering half back. Joan plucks the offering from between his fingers with a faint smile.

‘You know that I’ve been spending a lot of time in the labs, yes? It’s part of a deal,’ Sherlock explains, ‘offered by a member of staff: I carry out my own experiments there at specified hours, so long as I can come up with a definite explanation for what happened to those students. The man who’s offered the deal happens to be that disgraced President’s uncle.’ 

‘You think there might be, what, some sort of serial...“drugger”... on campus?’ Joan asks, feeling ill at the very thought as Sherlock nods. ‘But... shouldn’t the police be looking into it?’ 

At the question, Sherlock sighs at the ceiling; ponders his biscuit-half.

‘Detective Sergeant Lestrade is reluctant to listen to my repeated suggestions that these events may have another cause. I’ve been told to stay out of it, but now I’m certain that neither of those students took the heroin voluntarily.’ 

‘Gosh.’ Joan blinks; processes the information. It’s not so much what he’s telling her, it’s simply _how_ he’s telling it, fired and genuine on every word. He should be too young, too out of his league, too wannabe for this; Joan is sure that anyone else would be. But Sherlock – Sherlock is somehow experienced enough, _passionate_ enough, to make her think twice.

She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again, taps her fingers against her thigh and finally decides. 

‘Can I show _you_ something?’ she asks finally, hurriedly; Sherlock pauses and it feels like a _yes._ Joan pulls off her jumper quickly, before she has time to wonder why – tries to make a fast job of it, doesn’t want him jumping to conclusions here, _the weird medic tried to seduce me_ – and pulls down the left side of her shirt, showing him the scattered white scars, picnicked right above her collarbone and her left forearm, around and beneath her bra-strap. She watches his eyes fall over them, sees the way they focus and sharpen. His fingers slip up, twitch over the old wounds, but he doesn’t touch them. 

‘Last year, me and Harry, we, er... now, he didn’t mean to,’ she adds hastily as Sherlock looks up, something about the move a little _too_ sudden. ‘It was an accident. He was drunk, I went to restrain him and then both me and this old glass cabinet we had ended up taking a pounding. Well...pounded each other, I suppose, it depends which way you look at it.’ She smiles wryly as she pulls the top back up, still seeing it in her mind’s eye – has never really forgotten how she fell first, and how that raining sheen of glass fell after. 

... Even now, just over a year later, she still finds the memory _eerily_ beautiful. 

Sherlock’s gaze is tipped, _very_ tipped, his folded hands on his mouth and then he straightens up, inhales as if to speak, when the front door suddenly clicks open; Dana and Mary clatter into the hallway with bags of shopping and chatter about the latest _Twilight_ film, throwing their usual, obligatory ‘Hellos,’ at them as they rattle and rustle through. Joan runs a hand over her face, lets it drop. 

‘Do you still want dinner?’ she asks finally and Sherlock’s whole expression seems to shift. 

‘... Yes. Alright.’ He sounds questioning, but with it, somehow, _almost_ understanding. 

Joan smiles tiredly; spots, out of the corner of her eye, Mary peering around the kitchen doorway at them as they put their coats back on and with a brief wave, follows Sherlock out. Her phone rings as they step back out onto the street; it’s Sam, and feeling slightly guilty, she ignores it. She doesn’t know why; doesn’t know why she’s doing _anything,_ right now. 

‘Your father,’ Sherlock states once they’re around the corner and only when her phone has stopped vibrating, ‘is he the reason?’ 

Joan keeps walking, takes a breath and looks the other way, tells herself that she shouldn’t be so surprised, she really shouldn’t; because of course, of _course_ Sherlock knows. He probably always has done. 

‘Yep.’ She breathes out, focuses on looking straight ahead. Further down the street, there’s a giggling couple emerging from Cafe Belge, the girl laughing and holding up her phone to take a picture. Joan sees the opportunistic thief right before they do, a scattering blur in a tracksuit as he dashes past them, neatly grabbing the phone out of the girl’s hands.

‘Sherlock,’ Joan starts, barely hearing the unfortunate girl in the background screaming ‘Stop him!’ and then they’re running, they’re _both_ running. Her feet are pounding against the pavement, and there’s the dark shape of Sherlock on her left and before Joan even knows what the hell she’s doing, what _they’re_ doing, she’s following the thief, following Sherlock _into_ and _over_ the road and London is blurring all around her. 

Sherlock is a fast runner, well of course he would be, with his long legs and lean body; his coat flaps impressively out behind him, cape-like and easy to track and Joan can only trust his judgement, his direction, barely has time to admire the way he’s keeping the thief in sight before he suddenly veers off to the right and Joan follows, keeping firmly on-route with the pinching delinquent. 

The thief makes the mistake of looking around then, and bangs right into a pavement pillar by the zebra crossing; it crashes between his legs and he falls over it to the ground and if Joan were a bloke, she’d wince in crunched-crotch sympathy. But she’s not, and anyway, she isn’t feeling very sympathetic at all. She skids to a halt behind Sherlock as he snatches the phone back, hands it over to her.

‘You can be the one to return it to the owner,’ he says, his voice snagged by the pace of the chase; the thief takes the opportunity of distraction to make good his escape, crawling to his feet and away. Sherlock puts a hand to Joan’s shoulder, the pads of his gloves a warm weight on her jacket. 

‘Only a small-time delinquent,’ he states, as they watch the white strips of their pursued disappear into the dark, ‘likely to be arrested for car-jacking in the morning, anyway.’

A brief silence follows, filled only by the sounds of Sherlock’s hushed panting, and Joan realises, her own and slowly she digests the reality of what the hell just happened, her hair falling around her face because her band fell out somewhere along the way. She meets Sherlock’s eyes, but her mouth is stretching to a grin and her cheeks aching with the sheer weight of it and now they’re not panting, they’re laughing; they’re both laughing right there in the middle of a quiet street.

It’s good, actually. It’s really _very_ good. 

And then it’s not so good, as Joan glances around, recognising the small Chinese takeaway they’ve stopped next to, and then spots a pale flash in the alley next to it, just behind the bin-bags. She steadies, blinks as Sherlock follows her line of vision and everything seems to slow down as they jog across, Joan defying the sudden wobble in her legs to push past the pile of rubbish, and falling down next to the still – too still – form of a young woman, short skirt and heels, eyes closed and skin chilled as Joan checks for a pulse, _where is it...?_

She’s only vaguely aware of Sherlock moving around in the background, flashing his mobile across the floor around her before suddenly barking a warning. There, inches away from Joan’s knees, lit up by the screen of Sherlock’s phone, is a syringe needle, and squinting, Joan can see that there’s still liquid inside. They both stare down at it for a split-second before Sherlock plucks it up. 

‘Don’t – ‘ Joan reaches out towards him, but Sherlock simply places it well over by the far wall (Joan finds herself exhaling) before dropping to his knees, regardless of rubbish, pulling the girl’s other wrist towards him and finding what he’s looking for.

‘Twenty minutes at best,’ he says, showing Joan the yellowing bruise on her arm, the small, bloody hole where the needle’s been and she feels something surge up her insides as she whips her own phone out, dials _999_ with suddenly shaking fingers. Sherlock’s eyes are frantic, torn between focus and frustration as he surges to his feet. 

‘They were just here,’ he’s saying, telling her, telling himself, it doesn’t really matter, ‘just _barely...’_ The word is growling, ripping between his teeth as he looks around them, stumbling back out of the alleyway and Joan doesn’t know what he’s doing, doesn’t really have time to care as she keeps a hand to the girl’s shoulder and listens for the reassuring voice of the operator.

‘Hi, yeah, hello,’ she barely has time to curse herself for the way her voice is stumbling over her words and clears her throat, _get it together, Watson,_ ‘I need an ambulance for – for a suspected heroin overdose...’ She continues spilling out the details, the street-name, the address, the admission that no, she doesn’t know the girl’s name and with the promise of help on the way, takes a deep breath and then raises her head to look back up at Sherlock. 

He’s gone. 

*


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it be, Chapter Four! Thankyou again to all you lovely readers and those who have taken the time to leave kudos and to Sciosophia and Frayer for just being excellent.
> 
> Please note: this chapter contains details of some violence, health issues, minor character death and bereavement, so tread with care.

Hospitals have a kind of weird sort of... time-freeze thing about them, Joan decides, more so when it’s late at night. There are barely any windows in these corridors, just dark polished floors and white walls. A twenty-four hour limbo, changed only by one face after another in blue suits and masks. 

The girl’s name is Beth. 

Well. _Was._

And Sherlock is still nowhere to be found – not that Joan’s really been searching. She’s been sitting on this uncomfortable orange seat for what feels like hours, but hasn’t been, really; it’s not even ten yet, and the London students will probably just be coming out to party. Joan wonders what Beth had had planned for tonight; a friend’s birthday, maybe, or celebrating an essay result? She’s still clutching her jacket, a lifeline that’s no longer there and there’s a cold ache in her stomach that makes looking at the vending-machines totally unbearable and blimey, when _chocolate_ doesn’t seem to work...

She shouldn’t be here, she knows that much. She doesn’t even know what she’s still _doing_ here; theoretically, she should just hand the jacket over to a member of staff _(it’s cold now)_ and leave, just walk away, and she _can’t._

And Sherlock? 

Well... she has a feeling that Sherlock _won’t._

Sherlock, who suddenly decides to appear out of nowhere and stands in front of her, dark coat billowing around him as she blinks up. He’s holding two cups – not the hospital sludge, but Starbucks instead – _how the hell did he get that in here?_ – and one of them he hands to Joan and she can only nod, can’t quite form a _thank you,_ takes a breath instead as he sits down beside her. 

‘Already intoxicated by the time the heroin was injected,’ she tells him without looking his way, instead finding an odd comfort in slipping into that medic’s tone, those half-shades of what she hopes to become, ‘that’s what they said. Her system didn’t stand a chance.’ 

Next to her, Sherlock hums, low and pensive. ‘She’d started celebrating her Friday night marginally early, it seems. Certainly if those clothes were anything to go by.’

A silence falls down on them. 

‘Where the hell were you?’ Joan bites out quietly, and she takes a sip of her drink before she ends up saying something she’ll truly regret. It’s hot chocolate with whipped cream and she will be honest, it does make up just a _little_ bit for leaving her behind. 

‘Looking,’ is all Sherlock says, his coat bunching around him like armour and Joan shoots him a sideways glance. Of course he was. 

‘Find anything?’

‘No.’

‘Okay.’ She grips the cup, hard, in her left hand, takes another sip for the sake of comfort.

‘She was all alone,’ she says finally, ‘out there, all by herself.’ She licks her lips; realises her hand is shaking. 

‘You were there,’ Sherlock responds shortly and Joan smiles without humour at the ceiling. 

‘And what good was I, eh?’ She looks across at him, sipping his own drink, coffee most likely, sweet and black and strong. She feels like her words have slipped right off pages into piles of blundering garbles; left the canvas blank with both threat and promise.

She doesn’t really know what to say, and yet she has a truly horrible feeling that she knows _exactly_ where to start. 

Sherlock smacks his lips from the coffee and then glancing past him, Joan suddenly catches sight of the police uniforms lining the corridor. Sherlock immediately stands as one of them peels away from the group and heads down; already grey-haired, piercing dark eyes, marginally good-looking in the same way you might vaguely consider your mate’s older, busier brother to be (although now that Joan’s met Mycroft, that analogy’s become fairly screwed over).

‘Detective Sergeant Lestrade,’ is all Sherlock has time to mumble at Joan before the man himself is standing right in front of them and glaring, hard, in Sherlock’s direction as he stands. 

‘You again,’ is what he greets him with and on impulse, Joan gets to her feet, ‘now what the hell happened?’

‘We discovered her unconscious,’ is Sherlock’s short, ready reply, ‘an ambulance was summoned, and of course, as you know, _Sergeant,_ she was pronounced dead on arrival.’ 

‘And I’m supposed to believe that?’ Lestrade growls back at him, ‘You swan into Scotland Yard telling anyone who’d listen that these incidents weren’t routine, not just two more students acting like total idiots, and then a dead girl just happens to show up with _you_ in tow?’ It’s said with intent; a different kind of scrutiny to that of Sherlock’s own, but careless and rough with it as he folds his arms, all evidence of the hour, and the job of having to inform a family that they’ve lost their daughter. 

‘I’ve been talking to your brother,’ he adds then, tone a little too _knowing_ and Joan immediately feels Sherlock still next to her; oh, he is _not_ going to be happy about that. ‘How do I know,’ the Sergeant’s voice carries in the corridor, cracked under the weight of his duties, ‘that you didn’t have anything to do with this?’

Joan steps forward at that. 

‘Because he was with me.’ The words are firm, a lot firmer, with a hell of a lot more confidence than she herself feels and as Lestrade’s eyes swivel on her, she adds with a hell of a lot _less,_ ‘... at my flat.’

‘… And who are you?’ Lestrade asks; demands, even, as he looks her up and down. 

‘Joan Watson,’ and she wonders what exactly it says about this whole situation, about her, that she’s cursing the fact that it’ll be a few more years before she can add ‘Doctor,’ to the beginning of that sentence. If she’s lucky. ‘I’m a friend of Sherlock’s.’

At that, the Sergeant’s brow doesn’t so much furrow as completely drop; the various early lines on his face wrinkling more than ever as he looks between them. 

‘... Can anyone _else_ prove that?’ he asks finally, with one last glimpse at Sherlock and Joan has to bite back her sudden anger, can’t help but raise her chin a notch; wonders what exactly this bloke considers so wrong here that it means her own word – the usual, standard alibi in the eyes of the law – isn’t good enough when a girl has died tonight. 

‘Ask my flatmates if you don’t believe me.’ She wings a silent apology to Dana and Mary as she says it, for getting them involved in this whatever-it-is – but it has to be done, anything to get Sherlock off the hook here. She meets his eyes just very briefly; his gazed has fallen on her, his eyes just that little bit narrower and it’s somehow enough for Joan to realise that he wasn’t expecting her to stand up for him.

In the face of the heavy silence that’s fallen down on them, Joan drops her gaze, plucking up Beth’s jacket and holding it out.

‘You’ll probably want to give this back to her parents,’ she tells Lestrade tightly; he blinks down at it and then soberly accepts, giving Joan an odd look that seems somehow curious, glancing between her and Sherlock. Then something seems to fall away from his face and suddenly, he simply sounds very tired as he takes Joan through the procedures, asks for her address, contact details, and the names of her flatmates, and of course she needs to give a proper statement. 

Joan answers every question truthfully, reliving over and over the moment in her head when she reached out to touch Beth’s cold skin. When Lestrade finally lets her go, the first thing she does is whip out her phone and look through her address book for her home number. 

…Except that it’s ten o’clock at night and her Mum has an early shift in the morning. She taps the phone-screen a moment longer, and then gives up, puts a hand to her forehead. It’s weighty, heavy; far too heavy, and suddenly she really just wants to leave. 

She’s almost forgotten about Sherlock when his Belstaff outline turns up next to her and she can only sigh up at him, beyond the point of _anything._ She has the sudden urge to rest against him – he’s more than tall enough – and it’s not the first weird feeling she’s had tonight. No, a duvet and a pillow will be just as good, and she squeezes his arm.

‘I’m going back to the flat,’ she tells him, wanting to get away from it all, from here, all the while praying that Dana and Mary haven’t decided to host pre-club drinks at theirs tonight. ‘I’ll call you later, okay?’

She means it – she honestly does – but something still flickers in Sherlock’s gaze as she gives a smile that feels as though it’s made of dry clay as she pats his arm and walks away down the corridor, in the direction of the flat and bed. 

* 

There was always one body on the ground, just one, decked out in a shirt and jacket, which was funny really, because it was so rare that her dad wore a jacket, he usually wore that brown cardigan she liked to bury her face in. Now there’s two, and the other is thin and willowy, short skirt and ripped tights and heels and cold in the November night and she can hear _someone_ nearby, shouting at her to _get out of there Joan, get out of there NOW -_

– She can still hear them calling even as she drags herself out of the half-sleep she fell into, panic thudding against her chest, looking at the clock and taking in breaths, _it’s gone, it’s over now._

This. This hasn’t happened for... for a while. 

The next morning, each hour longer than the last, she checks her phone and groans at the three text-messages that Sam has sent her. She’s rather bad at this whole girlfriend business, isn’t she, she huffs as she texts back to invite him around; it’s only when he replies, asking for her address, that she realises he’s never actually been to hers before. She raises her eyebrows at herself, sends back a text, then sits down on the bed, burying her head in her shaking hands. Just then, the doorbell rings and it’s all Joan can do to simply put on her headphones and just let Mary deal with it. 

Shortly after, there are voices outside her door, and then Mary pops her head around. 

‘Er, Joan... some bloke from Scotland Yard just came around asking if Sherlock was here last night. I mean, I said he was,’ she adds, as Joan shoots up on the bed, papers falling everywhere, ‘but...’

‘Yeah, sorry,’ Joan grimaces. ‘Thanks for doing that.’

Mary pauses; lingers. 

‘Is everything okay?’ she taps her manicured fingers together and Joan’s aware that her hands are still trembling. ‘It’s just, you’ve seemed so sad since you got back last night, you told us you’d been with Sherlock and then you just went straight to your room. And you know,’ she wets her lips, almost nervous, it seems, ‘Joan, if you... if you need to talk about anything, well, you can always talk to me. Only,’ she adds, seeing her expression, ‘I know that you spend a lot of time with Sherlock, and I was wondering if, maybe– ’

‘Yeah,’ Joan rubs her eyes because this probably looks more than a bit not good, ‘I have him ‘round a lot, I know; I didn’t mean to get you into it.’

She huffs, contemplates her options, wonders about maybe telling Mary everything, as in _everything,_ spilling it all out. She’ll be brutally honest when she says that she feels much more comfortable with Mary than she does with Dana - but...

‘It was just a long night, Mary,’ she manages in the end, ‘just... something happened, and I just need to deal with it. That’s all.’

Mary nods slowly, something in her face unconvinced. ‘Okay.’ She pats her shoulder, and then leaves.

The rest of the morning is a cold hum; Joan tries and tries again to throw herself into her work, but the words just lie, dormant, on the pages and she finds herself reading the same sentence about stem-cell research over and over again, seeing instead Beth’s body on the pavement. She gives up when Sam arrives with wine and chocolate and a concerned expression on his face, having heard rumours. Joan feels like a coward, suggesting they go out to the cinema – Mary seems to hover in the hallway as they leave, like a chaperone, bless her and everything, but Joan could _really_ do without that right now – but the fact is, she needs _escape._

And yet as they take their seats in the theatre at the Odeon to watch yet another film about the ins and outs of love, she’s twitchy. Sam is kind, only wanting to help like a good friend ( _boyfriend,_ she reminds herself), wanting to cheer her up, and Joan has to keep biting down on her lip to stop that half-swallowed ‘Sorry’ from escaping. Guilt, vivid underneath the drumming and the noises in her head that _just won’t go away,_ is bleeding through her knotted stomach over the fact that she is being truly awful company.

She’s relieved when the film is finally over, mixed in with her own regret that she simply couldn’t try harder to enjoy herself; she says goodbye to Sam outside the cinema with a quick peck on the lips, insists she’s absolutely fine taking the bus back on her own and leans against the window during most of the journey. As it rounds the corner into her street, she shakes her head at herself, and pulls out her phone.

*

Sherlock is halfway through a cigarette when she arrives, the butt of it glowing in the dark. It’s an oddly warm sight, despite the obvious health hazard; a beacon, almost, that Joan can head towards. The Saturday night rancour of the campus is already kicking off around them. Sounds like there’s some kind of _Glee_ night going on somewhere nearby; there’s people walking past wearing cheerleading outfits and red and black blazers, and Joan can hear the faint strains of “Don’t Stop Believin’” floating through the air. She finds herself watching the cigarette between Sherlock’s lips, wonders how he can make it seem so elegant, even wonders about taking it from him and taking a long, long drag – 

‘It wouldn’t do you any good,’ Sherlock’s voice cuts in; he drops it to the floor, stubs it out. ‘This is my unfortunate habit, Doctor, not yours.’ 

Joan manages a small smile, but one that somehow feels genuine as she sits – or rather, drops – down on the bench he’s standing next to. 

‘You haven’t slept,’ Sherlock says, as he lights up once more, giving her the standard once-over. 

‘No,’ she responds simply. ‘Saw a film, though. Popcorn was nice.’ Sherlock chuckles dryly around his cigarette at that, the smallest puff of smoke escaping his lips. 

‘And you were right,’ Joan adds, before she can change her mind; Sherlock slowly pulls the cigarette between his lips, stares at her through the exhaled smoke. ‘About my Dad.’ She spends a moment finding the knees of her jeans particularly fascinating before she straightens up and looks him dead in the eye; he in turn slips his gaze downwards.

‘The photos,’ he says finally, ‘one of you and your father together, happy, but faded with time - you can’t be more than twelve in the picture - in a very recent, polished frame that says remembrance, as well as the one you have in your wallet. Your reason for your gap-year; that and the fact that you told me Harry’s drinking has spanned at least eighteen months.’

All said quickly and tonelessly, as though trying to spare her something, and all of it correct. Joan, way past the point of alarm, almost feels touched. With a nod of the head, she pulls out her wallet and looks for that old picture that Sherlock spotted on the first night they met; the way he mistook Harry for a girl still makes her smile. She holds it towards Sherlock; obligingly, he takes it in his own gloved hand. 

‘It was my Dad who named me,’ Joan tells him, ‘while my mum was pregnant, he’d stumbled across some old family records. Apparently, the Watson line goes all the way back to the 1800s, and Dad found out that one of our relatives, some great-plus-something-uncle I think, was called John. And he liked that. Said it stood out in his mind. When I showed up, he decided to just twist it a little.’ 

She meets Sherlock’s eyes and he meets hers in turn, nothing in his face giving him away, photo still and safe in his hands.

‘He was never a soldier himself,’ she continues, ‘it was always Medicine with him; he preferred it, it was quieter. My dad,’ she shakes her head, gives a smile that feels completely odd on her face. ‘I guess I... I always liked the fact that he was a bit fat; it meant that he gave great hugs. I mean, I practically jumped into his arms the day I got accepted into Kings.’ 

She stares determinedly down, knows that Sherlock knows that she’s taking time to compose herself. 

‘I was almost packed,’ she tells him, finally, looking up, _‘Almost,_ and Dad told me to meet him at his surgery after work so he could take me food-shopping; I think Mum browbeat him into it, she’d had enough by that point. It all happened before I got there; some guy, a mugger, tried to corner one of the other doctors when she left the building, and Dad ran out to help. Just neither of them realised he had a gun.’ 

‘A shock,’ Sherlock states at length and Joan nods.

‘Yeah, as I said. Not a soldier,’ she sighs; passes a hand over her face, ‘and that’s… that’s what did it. His heart, it just… just gave out; Sarah said afterwards that he just went over when he saw it and the mugger ran for it. Sarah did everything she could, but…’ she shrugs, ‘it just wasn’t enough.’ 

The words are free, cold breath in November air and Joan breathes in, breathes out. She thinks again of Beth’s family; her eyes blur salty at the edges without warning and she casts a hand over them. 

_Don’t cry. Do NOT cry._

… Oh bloody hell, she’s crying.

‘Joan?’ Sherlock sits beside her, watching as she tries desperately not to have a breakdown in the middle of Guy’s with only Sherlock and a handful of drunk, half-trained medics dressed as McKinley High School wannabes on hand to help.

‘Sorry,’ she pulls her sleeve over her fist, wipes her eyes, ‘I’m just... m’sorry...’

She’s suddenly aware of Sherlock shuffling around next to her and blinks through the hot, humiliating fog of her tears as he reaches into his pockets – coat, and then trousers – before his eyes widen in something like triumph and he tugs from his breast pocket a clean handkerchief, his initials sewn with gold thread – gold thread! – into a corner.

‘Mother always tells me to carry one around,’ he says, oddly prim, and Joan can only stare.

‘I’m... erm... strangely reluctant to use it,’ she tries, as he hands it over. 

‘Relax, I’ve got plenty more,’ Sherlock throws out casually and Joan has to swallow, _really_ swallow, on that burgeoning lump in her throat.

‘Thanks,’ she manages and it comes out as a gurgle. ‘Dammit...’ Hastily, she wipes her eyes with the hanky; it’s soft and completely _gorgeous_ to the touch. Sherlock watches her for a little while, silent and still; gives her time, watches her steady her breathing, a fog of cold stuttering in and out. 

‘You still think about it,’ he says finally and Joan can only purse her lips, thinks about what she’s about to say to him, what she hasn’t said to her Mum, to Harry, or even to her university counsellor Ella. 

‘Sometimes… it’s _all_ I think about,’ she murmurs, wiping her nose. And then just like that, it’s out there, _liberated,_ with the rest of it. ‘One…’ she clears her throat and tries again. ‘One night in first year, I went to the library and even though I had all this work to do, instead I… I spent that whole evening looking through books… for… for other cases, other heart-attacks like Dad’s.’ She coughs into the handkerchief. ‘I don’t even know if that gun was real.’ 

‘It’s... confusing,’ Sherlock offers up then, albeit cautiously; he’s looking at her sideways, almost as though he’s testing out the word on her and Joan can only nod. It seems to encourage him, somehow. ‘The factor of his health notwithstanding, there still remains the fact that the mugger had misplaced intentions to begin with.’

It’s not sympathetic, and it’s not empathetic, but it’s _something,_ and Joan feels a strange, almost stupid kind of relief; a curious, blissful emptiness inside her. It’s done. It’s said. A silence settles over them, companionable, and then there’s a sudden rustle next to her before Sherlock drops something into her lap. 

It’s a Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut Bar.

*

Later, Joan finds herself being jolted back into full consciousness by the sound of a ringtone, and immediately sits up on her sofa, both her open textbook and Sherlock’s coat – _Sherlock’s coat?_ – falling off her as she runs a hand over her face, blinks first at the clock, and then at the purple chocolate wrappings spread across her coffee-table. _Lots of dead soldiers,_ Joan thinks absent-mindedly; Sherlock, from his place on the floor, puts her laptop aside and pulls out his phone.

‘Sherlock Holmes,’ he says as Joan runs a hand through her hair – right before Sherlock suddenly surges to his feet, tone brisk with urgency, a dog that’s seized hold of a bone.

‘Where?’ he shoots down the line; a pause, and then: ‘Of course. I’ll be right there.’

‘Lestrade,’ he throws at Joan as he ends the call, ‘they found another student, about an hour ago. He’s alive,’ he adds to the look on Joan’s face before he whisks up his coat from the sofa and throws it on. ‘But he wants a word with me. Anyway, I’ve copied up all your lecture-notes; should make this week’s demonstration a little easier to deal with. See you later.’ 

‘I’ll come with you,’ Joan throws out, before she can give herself time to think about it, brushing past him to grab her own coat, all exhaustion and tired strain immediately shrugged off by the news. ‘And don’t look at me like that,’ she adds with something that feels like defiance as she shoves her coat on and grabs her keys. Sherlock watches her moving around him, before snapping on a glove. 

‘Come on, then. I’ve got the cab-fare.’ 

*

At Scotland Yard, they’re shown through into the offices and Joan feels as though she’s earned some kind of weird VIP privilege. Lestrade is baggy-eyed and grumpy and his superior – Gregson, Sherlock informs her as they approach – even more so. It doesn’t help that their eyes crinkle with something like confusion as they watch Joan and Sherlock entering together, as though such a thing is somehow disallowed and Joan just resolutely stares back, aware that it’s really only Sherlock that they were expecting and sticks close to his side as he greets them with typical Holmesian dry wit, the only awake authority in this whole police-station at a cool eighteen years of age.

‘Makes a change, Sergeant, calling me in rather than chucking me out. Janus springs to mind.’ 

_Janus..._ Joan vaguely remembers her dad telling her and Harry that story as a kid, a god with two faces, wasn’t it? Lestrade simply sighs in resignation, scratching his forehead as he does so, and looks between them before telling Joan, ‘His alibi checks out. Thanks for your help.’

‘No problem,’ Joan replies shortly, keeping her arms crossed, and Lestrade looks from her to Sherlock. 

‘Look... I need you to tell us everything. Whatever you’ve got.’ 

Sherlock raises his head silently, an assertion, and Lestrade pauses before waving him towards Gregson’s office.

‘I’m sorry, Miss Watson,’ he tells Joan as she makes to follow. ‘I know you’re... well, you’re _with_ him,’ and Joan doesn’t like the way he says that, a further implication that it’s suspicious, that there’s something wrong with the way she and Sherlock spend time together. ‘But I need to ask him a few questions in private. You can wait out here, if you want, by my desk.’ 

Sherlock pauses, looks at Joan, draws breath as if to speak, but Joan merely nods and takes Lestrade’s chair without a word. No point pushing their luck.

‘I’ll be back in a moment,’ Sherlock murmurs to her and Joan nods, crossing one leg over the other and avoiding the rest of Scotland Yard’s eyes, aware they’re all watching her. She feels like a junior-school kid again, standing out by a mile in a place that’s not her office of choice. 

She really hopes Sherlock hurries up.

She’s watching the conversation through the glass-panels of the office – Gregson is making hand-gestures and moving around the desk, and Sherlock is still, listening intently – when her phone suddenly vibrates, and she opens it to find a message from Mary:

_Joan, another students bn found, were r u?_

Joan quickly texts back, _I know, dont worry, with Sherlock._ Which technically isn’t true right now, but if she tells Mary she’s at Scotland Yard, Mary being Mary will immediately start asking questions like some sort of overprotective housewife. The fact that not many students find themselves in the police-station on a Saturday night _without_ getting arrested is after all something to be curious about. At a thought, Joan opens up the internet on her phone, checks her email, and yes, there it is: an emergency announcement to all students, informing them what has happened tonight. 

She thinks of Beth again and then she thinks of her dad. And what she’s also thinking is that it shouldn’t be allowed, it _really_ shouldn’t, when Sherlock’s voice suddenly snaps her out of her reverie. 

‘Are you alright?’ 

She looks up at him hovering over her, hands in pockets through thoughtful eyes for a long, long moment, before finally biting her lip and looking away. 

‘I think so, yeah.’ 

Sherlock says nothing; Joan’s expecting him to hit her with facts and then realises that actually…he’s waiting for _her_ to speak.

‘Sherlock,’ Joan balances out her words, carefully, at his silent bequest, ‘if… if there is someone going around, drugging the students,’ she says finally, and looking at Sherlock’s face, pale under the harsh police-station lights, she realises that there’s no if about it, not anymore, ‘well, I want to help. If you’ll let me.’ 

Sherlock tilts his head, looks her up and down; Joan simply holds his gaze.

‘So,’ she says finally, breaking the sudden hush that's fallen down between them as she nods her head in the direction of the office, ‘what’ve you got?’

Sherlock moves with strangely slow limbs as he pulls a chair around and puts his feet on it, sitting down on top of Lestrade’s desk as he regards her, clasps his hands in his lap. 

‘Another student, obviously,’ he says finally, quietly, ‘only just turned twenty, although he’s only here part time. Fortunately for him it was a vast crowd nearby…’ 

Joan listens, nods, and it occurs to her, in the back of her mind, just how much has happened in the past twenty-four hours alone, how the weekend has been anything but relaxing, and yet, she’s not stressed; not anymore anyway. She’s not even _scared._

That’s odd. That’s _very_ odd.

*


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FOUR YEARS.
> 
> I know. Guys. I know. 
> 
> Before I begin this chapter, I would like to say a huge, heartfelt thankyou to all of those who left comments and kudos and who bookmarked the story so kindly; you all made me feel so happy with your encouragement. I am an expert at beginning things, but not at finishing them and it's a habit I'm trying to curb. 
> 
> Since the last time I worked on this story, life has just been... one massive rollercoaster. I've suffered several bereavements and afflictions; unemployment, health issues, family problems, etc. I can't say I'm as happy as I was the last time you saw me. I've been working on this chapter for four years and well. It's a chapter and there's no more I can do on it. I am doing my absolute best my end, I'm not trying to be lazy and I don't want to cause false hope, but I beg the readers' patience and understanding, as life has been extremely difficult and I am still trying to navigate it. In any case, this chapter is completed and ready to go. It's been beta'ed and it's just sitting on my computer, waiting for an audience and there's no point leaving it there after working on it for so long. It was a difficult bugger; I remember sitting on the carpet of my now-late grandmother's house, trying to get to grips with it and struggling. Case-fics, I have discovered, are hard work. But life - and the stories we tell - are very precious things and I want to try and do my best to finish what I began when I was a happy student, high on Sherlock love and fandom. 
> 
> I will do my best; I can make no promises or oaths, just that I will try to try. We came so far with this story and sometimes you just have to stop thinking and just do it. And the fact of the matter is: I love Joan and I love Sherlock. Obviously we know have a genuine Joan with Elementary but I am so proud of the Joan I created here and I love genderswap too much. I adore it too much. I've spent a long time trying to make myself write John like everyone else but it just doesn't happen for me. I just love writing a female, British, sarky Watson. And anyway, she's still John; just with lady bits. 
> 
> At this point, I would like to extend a heartfelt thankyou to the really lovely dioscureantwins for taking up the gauntlet and reading the whole fic for me, particularly as genderswap isn't really their cup of tea. Some brilliant new ideas were introduced to the table and I found it very interesting to discuss and chat and find the time given generous and valuable. DT, thankyou so much.
> 
> And finally, I dedicate this to sciosophia, wherever she may be: sweetheart, if you read this, I love you and this fic would never have got started without you. I hope wherever you are, you are happy and thriving.

*

On the Monday, Joan takes herself through her morning classes with her head down and her brain buzzing, producing pages and pages and _pages_ of notes. She should be feeling tired, she really should be; she should be rubbing her eyes, pushing her hair back halfway through, should be stifling yawns – but she’s not _._ She’s just _not._

‘Are you alright?’ Sam asks her; he gestures to her face as she blinks back at him. ‘You look... you’re looking a little wired.’

She squeezes his hand under the table and kisses his cheek, even though she knows he’s absolutely right; she _is_ wired, very much so and she needs to slow down, but she _can’t._ She won’t. She’s not sure she even knows how, really.

They’re leaving the classroom for lunch and after Joan has kissed Sam on the cheek and watched him head off for the library, she’s just about to text Sherlock, when someone in the crowd suddenly calls her name; an unfamiliar voice.

‘Joan! Joan Watson!’

Looking around, Joan sees Jenny Wilson, editor of the student paper – and if she remembers rightly, the person who’s running the stories on the drug-scandals – heading towards her, instantly noticeable in a crowd by the very fact that she’s wearing a _lot_ of pink: pink sweater and pink heels – in this cold, _really?_ – and walking with a speedy, business-like stride, notebook in hand. There’s a bloke with her, strolling along in her wake, and Joan can’t help but feel crowded as the two stop in front of her.  

‘Jenny Wilson,’ she says, offering her hand, ‘I’m the – ‘

‘Yeah, hello,’ Joan accepts the vigorous handshake cautiously, ‘I know who you are.’

Jenny seems slightly thrown-off by this, but then she drops her hand and lifts her notebook instead, flips it open. ‘We wanted to ask you if you’d do an interview for the paper regarding the death of Beth Davenport on Saturday night; I heard you were involved.’

Joan’s brain, lively as it is, still has trouble comprehending what she’s just been asked and it takes a few seconds for the question to catch up, accompanied by the same pale image of Beth; dead, cold Beth, all alone in that alleyway.

‘Sorry – what? Er, no. Thankyou,’ she adds belatedly, shaking her head, the words sounding strange and far away on her tongue.

‘We don’t have to mention any names,’ the bloke chimes in, Jenny’s back-up – and also, apparently, boyfriend, if the way he’s got his arms wrapped around Jenny’s waist is anything to go by, ‘we can keep you anonymous, if you like.’

‘Er, no,’ Joan tries again, apparently the only answer she’s got on offer as she tries to inch away, ‘No, I _really_ don’t think that would be a good idea...’

‘Just a few questions...’ Jenny clicks her pen open, nudging her boyfriend in the stomach as he kisses her neck and Joan can feel herself starting to quietly panic over the fact that at this rate, she’s not going to get out of this without a gas-mask, a smoke-bomb, and a helicopter, ‘I’d just really like to hear your take on things.’

Joan can feel herself getting to the point where _she_ would just really like to seize Jenny by that hideous fluffy jumper and tell her – with words as sharp as the syringe needle that killed Beth – about that night in the alleyway, and how Beth’s parents must be feeling today _(numb, and unable to take it in),_ wants to make her _see,_ but then she also knows that life isn’t fair, and in any case Sherlock’s voice interrupts from behind.

‘Perhaps it would be better for you to worry about more important things,’ he says, stepping up beside her, and Joan gives a sigh of relief, closing her eyes briefly, ‘mainly, your own repeated cheating on your fiancé.’

Jenny freezes as Joan’s blinks and then glances down at the editor’s ring finger - and yes, there it is, an engagement ring, big, certainly, but not as sparkly as it ought to be and both Jenny and her bloke have gone completely still, his arms suddenly limp and suspended around her like a cold coronet. Into this stunned silence, Sherlock adds flippantly, ‘If you’re unhappy with the match, I would advise you to break it off now and save a lot of pain.’

‘Sherlock…’ Joan can just _see_ what’s going to happen next, and it’s all oddly predictable actually; namely, the way that the suddenly horrified-looking bloke, all the colour drained from his face at Sherlock’s words, is unravelling himself from Jenny and snarling ‘You sick _bastard!’_ while Jenny herself shrieks like a kind of deranged banshee before also throwing herself forward.

Joan barely has a split-second to get in-between them before utter chaos breaks out, and she finds herself grappling – _grappling!_ – with Jenny, trying to calm her over the sounds of her indistinguishable verbal abuse, and Sherlock on her left, stupid enough to take on the enraged wannabe wrestler _(you idiot),_ blocking, tackling and ducking his sudden clumsy angered swings, own fists up and prepared for defence, other students milling around them, staring and wary and Sherlock’s doing fine -

– But then the flight of the fist _connects_ suddenly, just as raging as it is random, bashing Sherlock’s cheek and his head is snapping to the side. Joan twists away from Jenny and pushes in front of Sherlock with a snarl of ‘Stop it,’ only vaguely realising how stupid this is as the bloke, fuming and furious, shouts at her to get out of his fucking way as he tries to bounce past her before she’s shoving him backwards with everything she’s got, and then shoving him again when he’s stumbling forward for another go. Sherlock’s saying her name behind her and Joan is throwing both her hand behind and a garbled, ‘It’s fine!’ over her shoulder even as Sherlock’s assailant pauses, fists bared but _clearly_ conflicted and Joan stares back, wills herself to keep staring because like _hell_ she’s going to leave Sherlock to him, bares her fists because she will, she absolutely will if she has to - before he finally looks the other way, mutters something about not wanting to hit a woman with a derisive hand-gesture.

Joan breathes out, a mix of cold, brittle air, relief and sudden exhaustion on top of everything else and turns to Sherlock, taking him in properly for the first time that morning: he’s breathing just as erratically as she is, the fresh bruise reddening in a splotch against the lower part of his cheek, close to his jaw. Glancing around, Joan realises, with a jolt of guilt, that she shoved Jenny to the ground when she made for Sherlock and moves forward to help her up.

‘You okay?’ she offers an apologetic arm, ‘I didn’t mean to – ‘

‘You keep away from me!’ Jenny snarls, pushing her hand away, a blonde, pink wave of fury stumbling backwards on her heels, ‘You and your – your _freak_ of a boyfriend!’

She screams the words in Sherlock’s direction before turning and stalking away and the bloke spits at Sherlock’s feet before taking off after her. For a moment, silence is the only thing between Joan and Sherlock as they watch the pair march off together and something about their body-language – namely, the way Jenny is avoiding her fiance’s eyes, walking with a noticeable distance between them – is enough to convince Joan that Sherlock was right.

Again.

 ‘I think I just lost you your fifteen minutes of fame,’ Sherlock says at length, just as the wind picks up around them and for just an instant, with his dark hair, he looks like a Byronic hero; saving training medics from unwanted media attention with his own typical rudeness, Joan thinks and then she wants to laugh at the thought on the heel of that. Bloody hell.  

‘Yeah, well... if I wanted that, I’d go on the X-Factor,’ she coughs, breathless, and Sherlock gives a low chuckle out of nowhere, as she adds, ‘Suppose I should thank you for trying to stick up for me, really.’

‘And you,’ Sherlock says then, with just the briefest look in her direction. Joan shrugs before turning her attention to the vast reddening bruise that’s been left behind on his cheek. Sherlock gives a questioning hum as she reaches up, putting a careful hand under his chin and coaxing him to look at her so she can inspect it properly.

‘Come on. We’d better get that sorted out.’

*

The kindly nurse says nothing; simply gets out an ice-pack and at Sherlock’s insistence (‘She’s going to be a doctor; she could use the practise,’ he says, with that smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes) allows Joan to take over with a small shrug, turning her attention to paperwork instead.

‘There. How’s that feel?’ Joan asks, holding the ice-pack to Sherlock’s cheek; he hisses through his teeth, the slightest sliver of complaint and the way he’s staring at her, mute with rebellion, just screams how much he’s dying to play denial simply so he can get on with his day. Honestly, Joan doesn’t think she’s ever met anyone who seems to care so _little_ for preserving what she can’t deny is such natural beauty (because, well. Because you’d have to be blind not to see it, frankly) – in fact, he seems to wear this bruise just as he wears the old scars on his arms: an accepted accessory, as though it’s something simply suiting to him. Resigned. Joan can’t help but wonder if he would even _bother_ treating it if she weren’t here.

‘Well, that was stupid,’ she says eventually, when Sherlock shows no signs of responding, even as she raises his chin a little more to adjust the ice, _‘Completely_ stupid.’

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it in front of her most-likely-no-longer significant other,’ Sherlock retorts, but there’s something about the way he says it as he meets Joan’s eyes; he sounds, well, _questioning;_ as though it’s some sort of test.  

‘Well, no,’ Joan agrees. ‘I mean – that wasn’t exactly _kind_ , Sherlock _.’_ She nudges him, only half-rebuking; he _is_ injured, after all. ‘And he wasn’t about to let you get away with it. Blokes tend to go on the offensive when they’re, well... offended.’ She rolls her eyes at such an appalling ending to her own sentence, ‘I should know, what with Harry and Carl.’

Sherlock gives a little grunt, his eyes fixed on the far wall as Joan continues to inspect his bruise. ‘Hardly the first fight I’ve been in, anyway.’

Joan pauses, mulls that over and then decides it’s simply not worth the reply; Sherlock shifts, taking advantage of her stillness by reaching up to take the ice into his own palm and leaving Joan to pull out her fingers from underneath. It takes her a few seconds to realise that it’s one of the few times they’ve actually _touched;_ they rarely do, somehow. It’s just one of the ways in which he’s a complete opposite to Sam.

‘She called you a freak, though,’ she says, stepping back and crossing her arms, frowning, ‘I mean… doesn’t that bother you?’

Another shrug is her only answer. ‘Not the first time I’ve been called that, either.’

Joan blinks, stares down at him, at Sherlock’s eyes, just as defiant as the chilly November weather outside and says nothing; can’t, just can’t. During her lifetime, she’s had her share of ups and downs; she’s never been overwhelmingly popular over the years, but she was never invisible either. Yes, she’s been singled out before, had her skirt lifted a time or two, but so has everyone, really. There had still always been a free place for her to sit at lunch, always someone to split a KitKat with.

But… _but_. This last year; no, these last two years. She’s watched Harry, even through his own grief and anger and drunkenness, find Carl; spotted them standing together in the kitchen sometimes, her brother’s arms looped around Carl’s shoulders like an anchor. She’s stood on the side-lines of group conversations and smiled vaguely at inside jokes she knows absolutely nothing of. She can hear Mary and Dana giggling together most nights over some film or other while she works in her room.

Seems that she’s only recently – slowly – started to come out of her shell.

She wets her lips slowly and, feeling how chapped they are from the November cold, rummages through her backpack until she finds her little blue tub of Vaseline, languishing at the bottom. Opening it up and running a cool, soothing layer of the gel across her lips, she glances back at Sherlock, still holding the pack to his cheek and on second thought, reaches out with her thumb to run the same over his own mouth. Sherlock blinks; shoots backwards like a skittish animal and Joan freezes.

‘Sorry,’ she says, quickly, holding out an apologetic, placating palm, cursing herself for forgetting, _Sherlock doesn’t touch, Sherlock has boundaries, no explanations why, he just does,_ ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to – ‘

‘No,’ Sherlock seems to manage, staring back at her. ‘No, it’s... it’s fine.’

There’s a pause in which Joan’s tongue suddenly seems stapled to the roof of her mouth and the pair of them are staring at each other like two children who have lost their lines in a play – and then Sherlock leans forward again, hesitant, yet at the same time almost in invitation and Joan slowly reaches out in turn; she does it in two brief swipes, finishing with a murmured ‘There you go,’ ducking her head, embarrassed all of a sudden, as Sherlock draws back.

‘I suppose,’ he says after a brief pause, ‘that this would make me your first patient.’ 

Joan shrugs at the thought, rubbing her hands down and putting the Vaseline away. ‘Well, aside from Harry and that paralysed squirrel that bit me when I was eight…yeah, I suppose you are.’ She grins a little, listening to Sherlock’s responding chuckle, slow but strangely reassuring, adding some semblance of normality back to the universe – or at least hers anyway – digging around in her bag a second time until she finds what she’s looking for.

‘And, ah, just for being so brave,’ she adds, turning back to him, ripping open her Twirl bar and holding half out to him with a wry grin, ‘you even get to have some chocolate.’

*

‘Beth Davenport was a campus tour-guide,’ Sherlock muses, the two of them having taken over a bench with coffee, tea and a paper bag, containing two large, flaky chocolate crossiants (yes, Joan _knows_ , but they have, after all, been in a fight). ‘According to the University office, it was a position she applied for every year.’

‘Okay,’ Joan ponders that, croissant flakes falling over her jeans as she takes a large bite; starving, the adrenaline left over from the fight, buzzing under her skin although in retrospect she could only count herself lucky it hadn’t been worse, ‘So…sociable…knows her way around, obviously…’

‘Hm, obviously. Friendly?’ Sherlock adds then, again blatantly questioning and Joan nods patiently, giving him a thumbs-up, along with the pastry bag, his own croissant still lingering inside.

‘Bound to be – _eat,’_ she adds, instantly severe as Sherlock starts to shake his head at the offering; at the tone of her voice he – very slowly – takes it from her. ‘But then, why would anyone want to hurt her?’ _Much less kill her,_ is what she can’t quite add.

She twists her lip at the thought, at the words on her tongue (Sherlock is quietly, but resentfully, opening the pastry bag on his lap), suddenly feeling more frustrated at this whole thing than she probably has any right to be, those answers just out of her – their – reach and she quickly downs the feeling by taking a long, calming sip of tea.

‘What about the latest victim?’ she asks instead. ‘Anymore on him?’

‘Discharged himself from hospital yesterday,’ Sherlock replies; at a raised eyebrow from Joan, he takes a obedient but small bite of his croissant. ‘Lestrade told me – well, very little, but that at least. And also that he was distressed,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought, brushing the crumbs off his chin and it’s almost endearing, actually, in a way, ‘He’d heard about the last – about Beth.’

‘I bet. Poor sod,’ Joan shakes her head and watches the lilting crowd that moves past them for a moment, wonders which one of them, if any, could be harbouring a secret. ‘Have we got a name?’

Sherlock sips his coffee, shakes his head, looking thoroughly annoyed.

‘Lestrade wouldn’t tell me, refused point-blank. I did manage to sneak a small look at the report though – right before he snatched it away.’ He scowls at Lestrade’s apparent cheek; Joan bites her lip, hides her twitching grin against the mouth of her cup.

 _‘Privacy,_ Sherlock,’ she warns lightly, because one of them has to set an example; he just gives a pensive, ‘Hmmm,’ in response, chewing his lip very briefly.

‘Caught the initials, though,’ he says then and Joan rolls her eyes skywards; there _really i_ s no stopping him, is there? ‘J.M. J.M, Joan.’

As she rolls the initials around on her tongue – no-one in her lectures she knows with those initials, not one of her Professors – he continues, ‘According to Lestrade, he swears outright that the syringes found with him weren’t his and that he was asking – well, _pleading,_ really,’ he says the word as though it mystifies him, ‘over and over not to be expelled, or even charged. Apparently, he kept knocking things over. _Very_ distressed,’ he glances at Joan as she balances her cup on her knee, considering the situation, the options.

‘And _extremely_ interesting,’ Sherlock adds blithely; Joan snaps her head around and then gives him a brief smack on the arm – _only_ brief, considering he’s already been hit once today – and he blinks back at her.

‘What?’

‘Sherlock. Bit not good.’ She speaks in as calm and measured a tone as she can manage; wonders if she should have learnt to expect this by now as she raises her eyebrows at him. Sherlock drops his hand; makes a quiet, frustrated sound. He eyes her for a moment, looking extremely petulant; Joan just sips her tea, watching him over the rim of her cup.

‘Just - think about it, Joan,’ he says at last. ‘A fresher; easily passed off as a mistake, first-week excitement and stupidity, costs him his place and his reputation before he’d even managed to get started. That’s fine. Alright, that’s _not_ fine,’ he adds hastily, with a glance at her face, her raised eyebrows, ‘but – you know what I mean. And then we have a society President; a bad show and a coincidence, something for the university to try and be discreet about, although they can’t stop the rumours spreading. And _then,_ we have a campus tour-guide: another position of responsibility, Joan. It’s like a build-up, do you see?’

Joan hums cautiously in the face of Sherlock’s logic. ‘… And there’s nothing that links them?’

Sherlock shakes his head. ‘Different years, different subjects; the only common ground is that they’re all Kings College students. But doesn’t that seem like a _pattern_ to you, Joan? Start small – and _then_ start getting our attention.  Which is why this one confuses me,’ he adds, swiftly changing tact before Joan can even breathe. ‘A _part-time_ student, unlike the others… someone who’s around less; less prominent, less noticeable…’

Joan raises her eyebrow; it’s a good theory, she can’t deny it, when stripped down to possible facts and figures. But... ‘Maybe there is no pattern. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.’

‘No, there _has_ to be,’ Sherlock snaps, suddenly harsh, without even looking at her; Joan clasps her hand around her tea, leans forward on the bench against the sudden bite of a cold breeze.

‘Why? Because you’re the only one who thinks you _can_ see all of it and you’re worried you might be proved wrong?’ She asks the question quietly, with just the smallest bite; Sherlock looks at her, seeming almost startled at the declaration.

‘Maybe,’ he offers finally and pops another piece of croissant in his mouth. They sit together for a while, silently sipping their drinks. Sherlock eyes Joan over the rim of his and Joan holds level with his gaze; at that moment, Sherlock’s phone rings and he fumbles to answer it.

‘Sherlock Holmes.’ He blinks; his eyebrow raises at whatever he’s hearing at the end of the line. ‘Alright. Thankyou.’

‘Response to a request,’ he says to Joan’s enquiring look, ‘I’ve been talking to the professionals in this field, trying to trace the source of that heroin.’

There’s something about the way he says it that leaves Joan straightening up on the bench as she realises what he means and Sherlock’s reaction – in the way he sighs and closes his eyes briefly – confirms her suspicions about exactly who those ‘professionals’ are.

‘No, I am _not_ using,’ he tells her with such blatant boredom tone; clearly he’s had this conversation before. ‘Just asking around.’ He glances at her and something in her face seems to still him. ‘Really. I just needed some information, that’s all.’

Joan nods slowly, thinking it over; now that that sudden flash of panic is past, actually, she thinks she can say with near-confidence that Sherlock hasn’t relapsed recently. She would be able to tell for herself in a glance, she’s fairly sure that she would know that much from a year and a quarter of medical studies and a brother on the very verge of alcoholism, but still… the idea of Sherlock wandering back into his own line of fire, revisiting elements from his own very recent past, feels a little too close for comfort.

‘Okay,’ she concedes. ‘Just – whatever you do,’ she adds quickly, because she doesn’t want Sherlock thinking she’s completely fine with it, ‘don’t get yourself in too deep.’ It’s not that she’ll ever judge Sherlock for it – as if someone with a family like hers could be throwing stones anyway – but that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to try and at least keep an eye on him in that area. 

‘I’m not,’ Sherlock’s voice, when he responds, is suddenly waspish, frosty and Joan narrows her eyes at him. ‘And I haven’t, so there’s no need for _you_ to worry.’ The emphasis that he places on _you_ makes Joan narrow her eyes at him; _oh, so touchy all of a sudden, are we, Mr. Holmes?_ As if they haven’t shared tea and biscuits over the fact. Tosser.

‘Alright, fine,’ she responds in kind, the sting in her voice a firm warning. ‘Don’t worry, I believe you. I just want to make sure you stay that way, that’s all.’

Sherlock’s response is a muttered, ‘I don’t remember anyone making _you_ my sober companion,’ into his coffee, but Joan hears it and instantly sees red. 

‘I am not your bloody sober _anything,’_ she snaps at him, ‘I just don’t want you _hurting_ yourself again; I’ve seen what it does, Sherlock, far too much of what it does. Pardon _me_ for being so concerned.’

She drains her tea angrily and rises from the bench – not intending to storm off, but not wanting to stay either, just needing a moment and settles for marching up the path and throwing her cup into the nearest bin. She stands for a moment, her back to him; breathes in, breathes out. Finally, with a last, misted exhalation, she turns back around. Sherlock is still as a statue on the bench, eyes focused on her, wide and almost wandering in the early winter air and Joan trudges back to him, stands over him with her arms crossed.

 ‘What did you find out?’ she asks him quietly. ‘Come on, people’s lives might be depending on this.’

‘Not a lot,’ Sherlock admits, looking – just for a second – considerably thrown by her as he stares up at her face and Joan wonders if she should be proud of that and decides what the hell, she actually is. ‘These people are… they’re careful, Joan, they have to stay one step ahead. No honour amongst thieves. Most of these deals are done in cash, particularly if they know you’ve got the money. There’s no chance of being traced. Whoever’s doing this is clever.’

‘Hm.’ Joan can’t disagree with that. There’s a very pregnant pause in which Joan toes her shoe along the ground, wondering, waiting if there’s something else and then Sherlock looks back up at her, clears his throat. 

‘I haven’t met up with them, Joan,’ he adds then, ‘I haven’t gone to see them; I’ve only texted them, or they’ve only called me. I haven’t been near them, or any of their stock. It’s only since this has started that I’ve been in touch with them.’ A pause and then he says it, looking into her face: ‘I promise you.’

Joan looks him over; wonders if he’s ever said anything like that to anyone else – to his brother, for example – before retaking her seat next to him. 

‘This really interests you, doesn’t it?’ she says finally, unfolding her arms. ‘What’s going on here. You’re really into it.’

Sherlock blinks; gives one of his typical sideways head/raised eyebrow indications.

‘There has to be a reason,’ is what he says eventually, gaze briefly hitting the ground, ‘and I don’t know what that is.’

Joan gives a shrug. ‘Maybe the person we’re looking for is just a complete and utter twat.’ Honestly, she knows Sherlock well enough by now to understand just how much he dislikes frustration; how much he absolutely despises having the answers dangled just out of his reach. He indicates her reply with a nod of his head.

‘Can’t argue with that.’

There is another very pregnant pause.

‘I’ve been told I can be a little too… intense.’ Once again, Sherlock says the word as though he’s silently asking her opinion on it; checking he’s got it right, waiting for a reaction – for whatever she might have to say and Joan just huffs softly.

‘It’s fine.’ Because it is, really.

She glances at her watch; gestures him to his feet. ‘Here, walk me to my next class. If any other journalists show up out of nowhere I want to be prepared.’

*

The rest of the week passes without relative incident, oddly enough, and on Friday – by which time Sherlock’s bruise is almost healed – Sam asks Joan to come out to dinner that evening.  

It’s usually Joan’s dinner-night with Sherlock – well, her dinner-night, considering the skinny git hardly ever eats anything – but he’s said nothing about meeting her tonight; she hasn’t heard anything from him all day, so she sends him a text telling him she can’t make it and leaves it at that.

She’s drying her hair whilst watching _Father Ted_ repeats on the lounge telly at half-seven that evening, vaguely considers lipstick (wonders if she even has lipstick still; maybe she could ask Mary) as she chuckles at the jokes on the screen. Nerves aren’t an overwhelming issue for her before a date (what that says about her, she doesn’t really know) but to latch onto something anchoring is a help, all the same. She wonders what Sherlock would make of it all, her dressing up and going out dating, what advice bordering on the sarcastic or possibly insane he might give her and she grins, shakes her head to herself, just as her phone vibrates with a text from the man himself.  

 _Speak of the devil…_ She picks it up with a lingering half-smile – which quickly fades as she looks at the screen.

_Got him._

Joan blinks; her eyes widen. Then the phone buzzes in her hand for a second time and she almost jumps out of her skin before she has the sense to check the message.

_Guys. Get Lestrade._

Joan blinks at the phone, the heaviness of the text message staring back at her, the meaning and everything else fades out – immediately, Joan is phoning him back, throwing her hairbrush aside, scrambling to turn off the television as she listens to the line ring. And ring. And ring.

‘Pick up,’ she wills, ‘come on, pick up, pick up, you bloody idiot…’

There’s no reply.  

*


End file.
